


Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:18:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: In the halls of a high school nowhere in particular, two men circle each other like binary stars, perhaps fated one day to crash into each other.But they teach phys ed and Spanish and kind of suck at science so it's a stumbling, lopsided, pathetic circle that takes a year to get around.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can write sweet in the context of other things, but I've never really written fluff. decided to change that. nearly 60k words later...oops  
> 1000% self indulgence that I expect no one to read
> 
> friends. have you ever read an AU in an area that you know - as big as your career, as small as a hobby - and it's just done WRONG, and no matter how good the fic is you can't deal with that you-don't-know-wtf-you're-talking-about thing? welcome to my frustration with teacher AUs. I've read like...hundreds over my *cough* many years in fandom, and I can count on like two fingers the ones you could tell talked to a teacher at all post-senior year. it's my bugaboo and I decided to fix it
> 
> literally everything here except for the characters and (most of) the relationship is drawn from real life. even the stupid stuff. especially the stupid stuff. you have no idea how fuckin stupid teachers can be. (all identifying info is changed)
> 
> that being said, my experience is not everyone's experience so take it all with a grain of salt. whatever it's fluff people don't take it too seriously
> 
> also if this was real there would be about 30 more icebreakers and I let you go with just one so you're welcome for that
> 
> oh and so everyone for the most part is current Overwatch age, but Reyes/Ana/Jack are roughly Retribution age (~50), didn't want to run into retirement age conflicts. (Ana had Fareeha young ok)
> 
>  
> 
> title from Pink Floyd's ["Another Brick in the Wall Part II"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz8frWcmthA) because I'm a cliche. written mostly to the soundtracks to Bastion and Firewatch

Jesse McCree skidded into a wall, smooth boot soles slipping on the freshly waxed floor. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, except that he tried to steady himself on a stack of chairs that promptly crashed to the floor in a clattering that reverberated against the walls of the cafeteria. Four dozen heads turned, staring at him as Jesse looked up through a tangle of furniture and weakly waved a hand, calling out, “Hi everyone.”

“And that would be our new Spanish teacher, Jesse McCree, who has joined us from his previous school in New Mexico,” came the gravelly voice of Jesse’s new superior, Principal Jack Morrison. Amidst a smattering of applause, a large hand reached in, followed by a dryly amused voice: “You okay?” Jesse grabbed the hand, and was easily pulled out by a tall man in a black track pants and sleeveless hoodie over black t-shirt. 

“Yeah, just lost my dignity somewhere around here,” Jesse said distractedly, realizing that his formerly dark pants were now grey with dust and other unmentionable debris. 

“Come on and sit down before Morrison notices you more and decides to start another stupid icebreaker,” the other man said, gesturing to an open seat at a table he had apparently been sitting at.

As if the principal heard: “Let’s welcome our new staff members with a facilitation exercise!” Everyone in their vicinity groaned, quietly enough to not be heard by the administration at the front of the room. 

“Let’s everyone stand up, turn to your elbow partner, and raise your arms up, with palms outward. Then put your palms flat against your partner’s palms.”

Jesse stood and faced the other man as they raised their arms. They were of a height, though the guy had gained an inch or two with the raised hood of his sweatshirt. Dusky skin and dark hair along with the black clothing meant that the only spot of color or light anywhere on the guy were the faintly amused bright brown eyes that met Jesse’s: “Welcome to Overwatch High School. I’d shake your hand, but I’m afraid the wrath of the principal would descend.”

Jesse grinned, and shifted his hand to thread his fingers through his partner’s, shaking it awkwardly in mid-air. “McCree, Jesse McCree. Spanish. Epitome of grace and balance.”

“Reyes, physical education and health. Apparently constantly rescuing dumbasses from misuse of classroom furniture, even before the school year starts.”

Jesse rolled his eyes, “Guilty as charged.” 

Reyes’s eyes crinkled slightly, “Hey, we specials teachers have to look out for each other. No one else will.”

“Ugh, so it’s like that here? Us versus the academics? Just once I’d like to be thought of as an actual legitimate damn subject.”

Reyes sighed. “It’s even worse, for us – our art and music teachers just got necessary transferred out, so you and I are literally all that’s left of the specials. Fuck, I hate even being called ‘specials’ in the first place.”

“Okay, now tell your partner three things that you appreciate about them!” came Morrison’s shout.

“Well, I’ll start. I appreciate that I’m not alone in our ‘special’ little hell,” Jesse said, as the echoes of Morrison’s voice faded. “Doesn’t this work better if you actually know the other person, though?”

“Have you ever seen an effective school icebreaker? Because I haven’t,” Reyes replied. “And I, hmm.” His eyes scanned Jesse up and down in a way that made him squirm a little inside. “I appreciate the sartorial variation you bring to our staff.”

“Are you mocking my boots?”

“Maybe. Or perhaps the hair, or the…poncho?”

“Serape.”

“Gesundheit.”

“I teach Spanish, not German, asshole.”

Respective shots fired, they shared edged half-smiles as Morrison instructed them to take the folder on their desks and open their Staff Operating Manual to the section on Building Entrance Procedures.

Someone slipped into the chair next to Jesse, and he turned to find a slender man with what looked like metal gloves disappearing into his sleeves next to him. He smiled at Jesse. “Hello, there! I am Genji –“

“Shimada!” hissed Reyes. “Where the hell did you disappear to, leaving me with the new guy?”

“Once you see Jack get that look in his eyes, you should feel free to suddenly need to use the restroom like me,” said Genji calmly. “I refuse to sit through yet another one of his icebreakers. Which one did he use this time?”

“Three things you appreciate about your partner, complete with hand gestures,” said Jesse. “You still owe me two more things, by the way,” he directed towards Reyes.

“So do you, pal.”

“You might even owe me an extra one. I think I might have ended up insulted there. I was impressed at your vocabulary, though. Who knew a gym teacher knew words like ‘sartorial’?”

Genji laughed loud enough to draw a frown from Morrison. “I like you, mystery man.”

“Jesse McCree, Spanish teacher.” They shook hands. Jesse couldn’t help himself from looking curiously at the gloves.

“I have prosthetics,” Genji said. At Jesse’s sound of apology at his intrusion, he waved it off with a metallic limb. “Don’t worry, everyone asks at some point. Anyways, I’m over in math, doing geometry and remedial algebra this year. If you’re where the old Spanish teacher was, you’ll be across the hall from me.”

“Nah, he’s not there, I just helped Zenyatta move his shit in. I know the guy has his whole classroom environment thing down, but you would not believe how heavy those salt lamps were.” Reyes grabbed Jesse’s folder and flipped it over. “It should say your room number somewhere here.”

“Mmmm oh, here it is. 124.”

Silence. Jesse looked up to see Reyes and Genji looking at each other. “…am I missing something?”

“Jesse.” Genji put a serious hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “This is a somewhat personal question about your beliefs, but – how do you feel about ghosts?”

Jesse quirked an eyebrow. “About the same as I feel about everything else that doesn’t exist?”

Genji shook his head in mock sorrow. “I will mourn you, my new and soon-to-be-gone friend.”

Reyes grunted from Jesse’s other side. “Ignore Shimada. It’s not haunted, it’s just been empty for years. The old middle school used to be on the first floor, but they shut it up after they found asbestos or some shit down there. We used to just be on this floor but we’ve grown in the past few years, getting new teachers in. Must be why we’re expanding down there.”

“Ah. Well, just remember me when you see those mesothelioma commercials on tv.”

“They cleaned it up, I’m sure,” Reyes said. “At least you better hope so.”

“I’m feeling just so good about this school year,” said Jesse with a sigh as they were instructed to turn to the section on building security.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse stood in front of what must truly be the slowest elevator in the world. Despite it needing to travel only one floor and him knowing that no one was on the lower level, he had still been waiting for a solid two minutes. With a wheezy ding, the door slid open. Jesse pulled the dolly in, managing to slam it into his ankle in the process. He rested his wounded leg on the dolly and started to pull his pant leg up to investigate the damage. The elevator, having decided to move at something more than a snail’s pace for once, opened its doors just as Jesse leaned forward, causing him to shove the dolly out into the hallway and Jesse to fall on his face. 

He lay there for a moment, wondering how he had survived thirty seven years without killing himself thus far, when a deadpan voice above him said, “You know, this is starting to become a pattern.”

Jesse rolled to the side to look up at Reyes, who was holding the elevator door open with a hip and a quizzical expression.

“I swear I am a functional adult,” Jesse grumbled as he took the proffered hand and hauled himself up. This time he noticed how large and warm the hand was, not to mention how easily he was lifted despite not being a light man.

Reyes didn’t seem to notice the attention. “I came over to see if you knew about the ramp, it might make moving your things easier.”

“Ramp?” 

Reyes waved a hand, “Over here. This area technically belongs to maintenance, but they don’t mind us using it, if we’re polite.” A set of double doors led to a large open area with a roof that must have gone up to the second floor, almost like a small hangar or somewhere trucks could be stored. “This used to be where the woodshop was, decades ago.” A large garage-like door with a descending ramp led to a covered area and underground parking garage.

“If you pull your car into here, you could just wheel everything over flat instead of worry about the elevator.”

“Thanks,” Jesse cut a suspicious glance over at the other man. “And why are you being nice all of a sudden?”

The corner of Reyes’s mouth came up in something that was almost a smile. “You might have noticed I’m not great at first impressions.”

“You did call me a dumbass in practically the third sentence out of your mouth.”

“In any event, I didn’t mean to be as rude as I might have come off, and I meant it about us specials needing to stick together. It’ll be a long year if we can’t support each other.” Holding out a hand to Jesse for the third time in an hour: “Hi. I’m Gabe Reyes. Resident asshole.”

“McCree. Clumsy smartass. Sorry for insultin’ your vocabulary before.” They shook. 

“Let me grab my car, I’ll be back in a second,” Jesse said, before turning and running into what felt like a concrete bollard. He stumbled backwards and realized he’d hit a very short and very broad man with the largest array of facial hair he’d ever seen. There were…braids.

“Torby!” Reyes exclaimed, and received a back pounding embrace. He turned: “McCree, this is Torbjörn, the head of maintenance. He’s the most important person in this building, seriously.” 

Jesse’s hand was shaken in an enthusiastic grasp. “Uh, Jesse. Jesse McCree, Spanish. I’m just over there,” he tried to gesture but his hand was still trapped.

“Great t’ meet you!” boomed the small man. “Anything you need, I am around here! It is good t’ have neighbors again.”

“Torby, we’re just going to use this area to wheel his stuff in. We’ll be out soon.”

“Take your time, I have to go upstairs to try and repair the holes in the ceiling that madman put in again! No respect for my hard work and repairs, no respect!”

Reyes pushed Jesse down the hall as the small man started to turn red as he continued to yell. “Ignore him. He and Fawkes, the chem teacher, don’t get along. He really is important though – lock yourself out, or something breaks, he’ll fix you right up.”

They were now in the overhang. Reyes pointed up a ramp that led into daylight. “If you parked in the regular lot, your car should be up there.”

“Thanks.” Jesse looked at the damp concrete above them and suppressed a shiver. “I don’t blame them for shuttin’ this area down. It’s not exactly pleasant.”

“It’s actually pretty great in winter – we all park down here and our cars stay snow-free. That being said, it is in fact creepy as fuck.” Reyes clapped a hand to Jesse’s shoulder as he went back inside. “I’ll get the dolly.”

Jesse ascended into daylight and slid into his ancient red pickup, holding his breath as he waited for it to turn over. The truck decided to grant him another day of functionality, and Jesse drove down under the overhang.

Reyes was waiting with the dolly, eyebrows raising as Jesse pulled up. “Seriously?”

“What? She’s old but she works. Mostly.”

“I know Morrison said you were from New Mexico, but was it New Mexico in the 1950s? Because I think your truck came from then. Also possibly your clothing.”

“Said by the man whom it appears wouldn’t know color if it walked up to meet him. If you want to insult my outfit, look at yourself first. You look like you got lost comin’ back from a Korn concert.”

Reyes gave him an elbow in the ribs on the way to the tailgate. “All black matches each other. You never have to worry about coordination.”

“I guess that’s one way of thinking of it.”

They loaded up the dolly and made several trips back and forth. Reyes lifted the last box, looking down to see a dozen or so disturbingly realistic-looking skulls. He looked at Jesse with a raised eyebrow.

“Hey, I don’t bug you about your personal life.” Jesse laughed as the other eyebrow raised. “They’re for  _ Día de los Muertos _ . The kids paint them up with washable paint. It’s always a hit.”

“Your class, man. I don’t judge.”

They brought the last load into his room and Jesse looked around. It used to be some type of science lab, and so still had sinks and black topped tables in odd places. He sighed. “Now comes the tedious part.”

“You’re telling me. My room got painted over the summer, so my stuff is both packed and wrapped in drop cloths.”

“The…gym?”

“Nah, I have a classroom upstairs for health class. I switch back and forth between the two, depending on if its an A day or B day. You’ll get the schedule down soon.”

“Thanks for helpin’ me. It would have taken me a whole much longer.”

“Not a problem. It sucks being somewhere new, a little guidance never killed anyone. I gotta go work on my room, now, though.”

“Yeah, sure. See you around.” Jesse watched Reyes walk away, and told himself he certainly wasn’t watching the man’s ass, he was just considerately making sure he left the room alright.

He might have made a fool of himself in front of his colleagues and be trapped in the Basement from Hell, but at least he’d have some eye candy for the year.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse laid flat on his back on a table in the middle of his room, staring at the cracked acoustic tiles above him before closing his eyes. It was Friday at 2:20, the end of the first week of school, and he was finally free.

“Don’t tell me this was another accident,” came Reyes’s voice from his door. Jesse cracked an eye open, then closed it again. 

“Nah, this is called I am goddamn exhausted and feel like I’m back in my first year teaching.”

A creak as Reyes sat in a chair close by. “How many is this for you?”

“This is my fifth. Teaching was kind of a second career for me.” Jesse didn’t elaborate, and Reyes didn’t ask. After a minute: “I know we don’t know each other that well, but can I vent?”

“Sure, I didn’t come down here for my health. Wanted to see how you were doing.”

Jesse ignored the warm glow he got at that, and pushed himself up to sit cross legged on the table and facing Reyes. “Man, I know how to teach. I’m good at it. Spanish doesn’t have state tests or anything and it’s the most common language after English in this country, so it’s not hard to get the kids interested or make it relevant, it’s low-stakes for them. And I have my shtick going. And yeah,” he grinned, “The outfit is a lil’ bit part of it. I’ve taught suburban, but I’ve mostly done city schools. I know what the kids are like and how to reach them. The trust you gotta build before the respect. But this group?” He exhaled in frustration. “They hate me and I haven’t even done anythin’ for them to hate yet!”

Reyes leaned back in his chair, two legs coming off of the floor that made Jesse bite back an automatic chastisement. “It’s not you, if that helps.”

“Then what is it?”

“You have the sophomores and juniors, maybe seniors in AP, right?” Jesse nodded. “That’s why. They were really close to the art and music teachers that I mentioned, the ones that were transferred out. The kids don’t really understand how transferring works - they read it as that they were fired, and so they blame Morrison and the school for it. Just by virtue of what we teach, kids tend to like and trust us more, and they’re really damn angry now that they feel that the trust was shattered. We spent a lot of time telling them that it was because of budget, and they didn’t seem to get it, but maybe they did - we told them that we couldn’t afford to keep them, and now they find the school hired you. Another special, but not the ones they wanted. It’s not you, it’s just the fact that you’re here.”

“Oh, well _ that _ makes it better. Let me try and fix that existence thing I’ve got going.,” Jesse groused. He sighed, “No, that explains a lot, actually. It seemed oddly personal though.” He looked away from Reyes, slightly embarrassed. “This one girl asked me who I had to fuck to get here, and it was the first thing she ever said to me. It was...weird.”

“Really long, curly black hair? Hipster glasses?” Jesse nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like Rosa. She was very close to Amélie Lacroix, the art teacher.” Reyes pushed his hood back for a second, running his hand through slightly greying dark curls before pulling it back in place. “We told the kids it was a budget issue, and it actually was for the music teacher. Lacroix, though, was moved because they had to. She cheated on her husband, who was the principal at the elementary school down the road that most of the kids here had, and did it with the assistant superintendent. News got out, and the kids just didn’t know how to react. They’d loved Gérard but they also loved Amélie, and you know how they behave when they feel betrayed.”

Jesse nodded, wide eyed, having listened in silence. As nice as the information was, it was almost nicer to hear Reyes’s smooth voice talk more than he’d heard all week. “That explains a lot. It’ll be a rough start, but maybe once they get that I had nothing to do with any of it, that I’m just here to teach them, hopefully they can accept me on their own terms.”

Jesse slid off the table, and moved to grab his bag. “On that note: not to kick you out or anything, but I need to see the back of this place for awhile.”

“Yeah, me too. I’ll walk you up.” The two men strolled down the hall and down the ramp, footsteps echoing in the garage’s darkness.

“I meant to ask - if you’re phys ed, are you in charge of coaching?” Jesse asked.

Reyes shrugged half a shoulder. “To an extent. We’re a big enough district that we have an athletic director,  Aleksandra Zaryanova, based over at Blizzard High School. I do a decent number of our teams, but Zarya’s in charge of the whole thing. Why?”

Jesse tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, catching his balance before answering. “I did some coaching at my old schools, was hoping to do some here.”

Reyes let out the closest thing to a laugh that Jesse had heard the man produce yet. “No offense, McCree, but given your seeming inability to stand on your own two feet, I’d be nervous about letting you near anything more intimidating than a yoga mat.”

“Hey! Me in everyday life is nothin' like me on the field.”

“Uh huh. What would you be interested in, provided you can last long enough to not break a limb?”

Jesse rolled his eyes. “Cross country, where I have yet to break anythin', thank you very much. Wrestling, too. That one I have broken my nose in a few times, I’ll admit. And I don’t know if the laws allow it here, but I started up a shooting club that was real successful at my last place.”

“Shooting? Like guns?”

“Yeah. Rifles mostly, trap shooting, but the kids who turned 18 we started to train on handguns. Don’t worry, we put everyone through safety classes. We couldn’t stop everyone and their crazy uncle from owning guns, but we could at least make damn sure that they knew how to handle them safely. We also had archery for a bit, but our guy in charge of it left.”

“Huh. You know, you should talk to Amari, the assistant principal. She was in the Egyptian Army back in the day, and I know she was a sniper. I don’t quite know how she would feel about guns here, but it’s worth a try. As for the rest, I know we could definitely use a cross country coach for the men. We have a women’s coach but she’s too overloaded to handle the guys too.”

“Nice, nice. And the wrestling?”

Reyes smirked. “That’s my realm, kid. I take our team to states every year.”

“Mmm. I won’t step on your turf, then.”

“You should come to our practices sometime. It’s always good to get a second opinion. First, though, talk to Amari, and you can get Zarya’s contact info from her at the same time. If you’re serious about it you should start now, it’s hard to get things going once the year is underway.”

Jesse realized they’d be stopped by his truck for a few minutes now, just talking. “Thanks, man. And thanks for the info on the,” he waved his hands around ineffectively. “Situation.”

“Not a problem,” said Reyes. “See you Monday.” He walked off, and as Jesse got in his truck and turned it over, he lost sight of the tall man. A minute later, though, he heard a screech of tires and saw a black motorcycle with a black-clad helmeted rider scream out of the parking lot. Surprise, surprise, that the grumpy gym teacher would have  _ that _ as his vehicle. Jesse decided to mock him as soon as he could, in payback for commenting on his beloved truck. With a breath of relief at the week being done, Jesse pulled out and left the school behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Weeks passed, and Jesse got into his groove. His classes had evened out - he made sure not to react to the sniping comments, and the students lost interest in annoying him and slowly grew invested in their work. He had them make commercials for ridiculous products and write Spanish limericks about their other teachers. His advanced placement group had taken to making posters about famous Mexican artists like ducks to water, and he was enjoying seeing their creativity. It was still early in the year, but he thought they were on the way to liking him.

Jesse’s professional life was pretty good, too - after talking with Zarya and then Lena Oxton, the freshman English teacher and girls’ cross country coach, he found himself signed up as advisor for the boys’ cross country team. He spent time mapping out routes for them. Running cross country in a city wasn’t the same as out in the woods, he had to try and link up as many parks, fields, and trails as he could while keeping them all safe. They could run on concrete and asphalt all day and it wouldn’t help adapting to the trails at a competition.

Jesse found some routines, some work friends. He often had lunch with Genji, joined occasionally by Satya Vaswani (CAD and robotics), Winston (physical science, Jesse had yet to learn his first name), and Brigitte Lindholm (physics and, unexpectedly, Torbjörn’s daughter). The staff seemed to naturally fall into subject-line groups, ELA vs STEM vs other humanities. Jesse tended to hang out with the sciences because of his early friendship with Genji, but generally drifted, not really part of one group or another. The curse of the specials. 

Speaking of which, he rarely saw Reyes. He never seemed to be in the teachers’ lounge or lunchroom, and outside of their ten minute daily morning meeting and afternoon Monday administrative minutes, he didn’t see the guy. He asked Genji about it one day, who shrugged. “Reyes has been here for...decades, I think? Twenty years, must be. At this point he knows everything, he’s just an institution. We hang out sometimes outside of school, but he doesn’t come to Friday afternoons or anything.” He poked Jesse at that. “Which you should come to, as well!”

Most of the staff tended to go out to a bar after school on Fridays. Jesse was far from opposed to bars and didn’t mind hanging out with coworkers outside of school, but he just didn’t want to handle it after a full week of work. Jesse was friendly and outgoing at school, but after teaching a hundred and fifty hormonal teenagers and dealing with both their drama and the general gossip that happens among any school staff even though they should know better...he just could not deal with being around more of humanity. 

It was those Friday afternoons that he missed home. Missed the desert and open spaces. He didn’t mind the city - and they were on the edges, it’s not like he was trapped downtown - but he longed for being able to see from horizon to horizon without a building in the way. He got it out of his system by his usual coping mechanism - running. Jesse was determined to run every street in the city, finding the best routes and hidden spots. He approached it with a tactical determination, marking run routes with various colors on a paper map on the side of his desk.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It was a Friday afternoon that found Jesse restless. On Wednesdays and Fridays he had planning last period, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was great in that he could clean up his room, put up his chairs, and set himself up perfectly for Monday, but once that was done he found himself antsy. He couldn’t work on actual lesson planning, his brain was just checked out. 

Jesse found himself wandering the mysterious first floor. He wasn’t actually the only person down here - Torbjörn and his maintenance crew had a whole section, Satya had a robotics lab that she had class once or twice a week, there were rooms of intervention specialists who used them as home bases between traveling to classes, and there were many closed up rooms like art and music that weren’t currently in use. Jesse was the only one down there full time, though.

Right before turning the corner on the east side of his hallway, Jesse saw a set of double doors in a darkened alcove that he hadn’t noticed before. He opened a door and found himself in a dark room. It smelled like...feet? Ew. He couldn’t see a light switch so he pushed his way through what felt like carts on wheels until he reached the crack of light signifying a door on the other side of the room. He pushed the bar of the door, and blinkingly found himself staring at Gabe Reyes’s back.

Reyes half turned and raised an eyebrow, but kept blowing his whistle every few seconds as students dashed back and forth between cones. At a longer blast, the students stumbled to a stop, some dropping flat onto the gym floor.

“Get your ass up, Noah. If you lay down now you’re going to stiffen up and I absolutely will lock you in here over the weekend. Stretch your arms up, you know the drill everyone.” Reyes barked out, as the students stumbled to their feet and started on a stretching routine.

“Suicide drills on Friday last period. You  _ are _ cruel.” 

“It was their choice, believe it or not. They can either spend the whole period playing volleyball, or they can do drills for the first part and then relax the rest of the time. It’s surprising how often they pick the drills. We got started late today, though. Normally it doesn’t go this long.”

A boy with blue streaks in his hair threw himself at Reyes, grabbing onto the sides of his unzipped hoodie and dangling off. Reyes didn’t move a muscle, an arms-akimbo statue in black sweats. “Dominic.”

“...water, Coach...I’m...dying.” 

“No, you’re not. Where’s the water bottle you were given at the start of the year?” 

“Roger...took it.”

“Then you should have kept better track of your belongings.”

“Coach, I’ll die of dehydration…” the kid whined.

Reyes rolled his eyes and looked at the wall. “Then go annoy Roger about it instead of me. It’s about time for you to go anyways.” The kid popped up and ran off, apparent death staved off by the anticipated bell. “Grab your crap, clean up your area! Felix, get back there and throw that paper in the trash, I’m not your mama. All of you go the hell away.”

The students trickled out of the gym, a few stopping by to give Reyes arm-punches or half-hugs. He bore it all stoically, but the kids seemed to expect the lack of response.

“They really seem to like you, despite your...everything.” Jesse commented as the last of the kids left.

“This group knows me pretty well, I’ve had most of them for two or three years now. And I had them for health last year. Between the mental health awareness talk and the sex ed, they know that I’m straight with them and don’t fuck them around. That’s all they really need for trust.”

Jesse started grabbing the stray tennis balls that seemed to be everywhere, Reyes nodding his thanks as he tossed them in the hopper and did the same.

“Speaking of which, how’s it going with your group?”

“I don’t know if Rosa will ever like me, but overall it’s improved a ton from that first week. The beginning students are too confused to spend time worried about me, and the upper and advanced ones just have too much work.”

“Keep them too busy to think about you. I like it.”

Reyes opened the doors to the room Jesse had emerged from and flicked on the light, rolling the hoppers in against the wall. 

“I guess you discovered the ball room. To be honest I’d forgotten myself that it opened up into your hallway.” 

“God, it smells.”

“Welcome to gym. Everyone smells.” Reyes didn’t smell, other than a hint of some citrusy cologne, Jesse noticed as he followed him back out into the gym.  _ Stop thinking about that, Jesse. First rule of school, never fuck around at work.  _

Reyes walked over to a small door and opened it, turning the light on. It was a small - very small - office, barely big enough to fit a desk, chair, file cabinet and bookshelf. 

“Damn, this is all you have? This entire space is the square footage of my desk.”

“Pretty much. I have my classroom upstairs, but I only use that when I’m doing health. This semester is all gym, so I’m down here full time. It’s not like we do much that needs storage, though. If they do a test it’s either physical or on their computer, and I send them info sheets through email. It’s small but I’ve got a giant gym to be in if I want.”

Grabbing a duffle bag - black with red piping, surprise surprise - Reyes locked up his office. “You headed out?”

“Yeah- oh, well, I gotta pick up my stuff first.”

“I’ll follow you, I’m parked in the garage anyways.”

They walked across the gym floor, Jesse’s boots squeaking slightly. 

“I should be yelling at you for wearing those on my nicely waxed floor.” 

“I’m not taking them off for twenty feet.”

“You will if you come back here again,” Reyes said.  _ Does that mean he wouldn’t mind me visiting? No. Stop. Think about making a friend and leave it at that, _ Jesse thought to himself.

They walked down the hallway and reached the classroom, Reyes waiting by the door while Jesse slung his bag over his shoulder.

“You going to the Friday bar group?” asked Reyes.

“...No,” Jesse said after a pause. “I know it might make me seem antisocial, but I just can’t handle that many people, ‘specially those that I saw all week, right after a full weeks’ worth of class. Not to mention I have plannin’ last on Friday, so I start to get all nervous energy filled.”

“I get it. I used to go, years, back, but it just got tiring.”

“We should form our own group. The grumpy bastards who just want to drink and not talk group.”  _ Just trying to make a friend. _

“Maybe.”  _ Well, it’s not a no. _

“This is me,” Reyes said, stopping. 

“I thought that was you the other day, squealing out of here on that edgelord motorcycle. Aren’t you a little old for that?” Jesse asked, as Reyes wheeled it out.

“You’re only as old as you feel, McCree. I see the grey in your hair, too.”

“...It has a  _ skull _ on it, Reyes.”

“You have boxes of skulls in your room. You don’t get to talk.”

“They’re an important cultural tradition!”

“Well, maybe this is my cultural tradition.”

“Of what, your time as a pirate?”

“You don’t know my past. Arr.”

Jesse grinned. “I’ll see you next week.” He walked up the ramp towards the parking lot, and had to jump to the side to avoid Reyes barrelling up the ramp with a screech of tires. Under the sounds of the muffler, Jesse could have sworn he heard laughter.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Early Saturday morning found Jesse running. He’d found a trail that started just around the corner from his apartment, and from what the map told him, should end in a park. Although it was cloudy and unseasonably chilly for September, Jesse wore an old 5K t-shirt and shorts, knowing the run would warm him up soon. 

The trail was beautiful, trees blocking out everything, but no tree roots on the trail itself so Jesse could easily zone out and enjoy the stretch of his legs. He paid little attention to the turns he took, winding his way through the forested area. He eventually burst out into a park, the trail running along the edge of the grass. As he ran, he got closer and closer to a group of uniformed figures running at each other. He heard the tweet of a whistle and squinted. Was that a ...black hood? 

Jesse veered across the grass, jogging over to the group. It was indeed Reyes, wearing a black windbreaker with the hood up and calling out formations to the football team in front of him. He looked at Jesse in surprise, waving a distracted hello as he called out some complicated play, then clapped his hand on the shoulder of a massive man, who started bellowing in a deep voice.

Reyes walked over to Jesse. “What’re you doing here, McCree?”

“Just on a run. I’ve been tryin’ all the different routes around here, seein’ what I like. You’re doing...football? For school?” It didn’t look like OHS’s colors on the field.

“Yep. We don’t have enough for a full team of our own, so we team up with Blizzard High.” He nodded at the giant man. “I’m only assistant coaching this year, Akande is doing the heavy lifting. It’s nice, there’s an away game tonight and I don’t have to go.”

“Ah.” Jesse said. They stood in silence for a moment watching the field, Jesse shifting from side to side to keep his legs from stiffening.

_ Crack! _ Thunder boomed across the sky, and a bolt of lightning flashed in the distance. Between one breath and another, a wall of water descended on them, turning the field to mud in moments. Jesse stood to the side as Reyes and Akande rounded the kids up, Akande walking them over to a distant clump of cars. As Reyes started to grab the kickers’ nets, Jesse gathered up the cones that were scattered around. At a wave of an arm, Jesse jogged over to a black panel van, helping Reyes put the equipment in the back.

“Can I drive you to your car? Where are you parked?” called Reyes over the thundering sound of water. 

“I ran here from home, I’m over thataway. Somewhere,” Jesse pointed at the forest area that was now barely visible through the downpour.

Reyes shook his head. “Get in, I’ll drive you back.” 

Jesse nodded thanks, and pulled open the passenger side door. Reyes turned the van on, both men wincing at the blast of music. Turning it down, Reyes turned the air on high, the windows having fogged as soon as they got in. They sat in silence for a minute, the whoosh of the van’s fan their only soundtrack.

Jesse looked over to find Reyes looking at him assessingly. Jesse felt like that very first day when Reyes looked him over, like he was being measured up. He suddenly felt very aware of his damp shorts and ancient white t-shirt that was now nearly transparent and plastered to his skin. A drop of water trickled off of his hair and onto his nose, making him sneeze.

“You want to grab some coffee? You look like you could use some warming up.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Windshield now clear enough to see a bit out of, Reyes backed the hulking vehicle up, turning onto a road Jesse didn’t recognize. He looked around him with interest - despite getting here on foot, he had no idea where they were. After a few turns, Reyes pulled into an almost empty parking lot. Jesse was actively shivering by this point, and looked hungrily at the shop’s lights shining at them through the rain.

“Here,” Reyes said, and black fabric hit him in the face. Jesse shook it out to find it was Reyes’s beloved black hoodie. Or one of them, anyways, this one had sleeves. Jesse looked over in surprise. “Really? You live in this, man, thought it was sacred to you.”

Reyes rolled his eyes. “It’s a goddamn sweatshirt McCree, and you look indecent right now. Put it on so I can caffeinate.” He pulled open his door, waiting for Jesse to open his own so he could lock the van up. 

Jesse pulled on the hoodie - god it smelled amazing, just a bit too big in the shoulders and too tight at the waist - and got out. They ducked through the rain and entered the small coffee shop, a tinkle of bells announcing their presence. 

A woman somewhat younger than Jesse with startlingly purple hair looked up and smiled. “Gabi! Mi sol! You have returned to me!”

To Jesse’s surprise, Reyes’s face actually split into a grin, creasing the scars on his face. “Hey, Som. What do you have for me today?”

“Apple turnovers, almond croissants, and just for you, some tres leches.” The girl’s attention turned to Jesse. Her quick eyes looked him over, taking in the hoodie. “And what have you brought to  _ me _ ?” A slightly lecherous grin spread over her face.

“Back down,” Reyes sighed. “McCree, this is Sombra, proprietor of the Dorado Cafe. Sombra, this is Jesse McCree, he teaches Spanish over at the school.”

<”How exciting! I know they have not had a language teacher in quite some time!”> Sombra said in Spanish, prompting a smile from Jesse.

<”God, it’s nice to just hear someone speak without pausing after every word and messing up tenses. Your accent is familiar, where are you from?”>

<”Mexico City, but I’ve lived here for most of my life.”>

Jesse’s smile spread. <”My mother was born in Mexico City but she grew up near Juárez.”>

<”Ah! You absolutely must have some of my tres leches cake then! It’s a taste of home. I don’t make it that often, but I keep some around for Gabi, I’m trying to fatten him up,”> Sombra poked a coffee stirrer at Reyes’s very non-fat torso.

<”I already have a mother, Sombra.”> Reyes said in accentless Spanish.

Jesse stared at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you could speak Spanish!”

“My name is Gabriel Reyes and I’m from Los Angeles. It’d be weirder if I didn’t,” said Reyes serenely.

“Yeah, but think of how all this time we could have been talking shit about everyone.”

“Hmm. True.”

Sombra busied herself getting three pieces of cake, and sat with them at a table by the fireplace, waving off Jesse’s attempt at payment. “This is food with friends, not customers.”

“So how do you know each other?” Jesse asked, attempting the right amount of casualness in the question.

Sombra’s mouth twitched a bit before answering, making Jesse wonder if he’d lost all subtlety. “I dated his sister for a time, back in LA. The relationship didn’t last, but I liked Gabriel better than her anyways. We lost track of each other over the years, but one day Gabi walked in here and we reconnected.” 

Jesse nodded, sticking a bite of cake in his mouth. Good lord, it was amazing.

“We’re both away from our families,” continued Sombra. “So we decided to annoy each other in solidarity ever since. Mostly I feed him and try to get him to develop some kind of personal life.” She pinned Jesse with an uncomfortably direct gaze. “How about you, are you single?”

Jesse, who had just taken an overlarge bite of cake, tried not to choke as he carefully chewed.

“Jesus, have some tact, Sombra. Leave the man alone, he just moved and got started here and he doesn’t need you mucking up his life like you do mine.”

“Psh. I’m just looking out for you,  _ pendejo _ .” The bell tinkled, and Sombra looked up. “Oh look, actual customers. I’ll bring you coffee later. Eat your cake.”

Reyes sighed as she walked across the shop. “Sorry about her. She’s like the extra little sister that I never particularly wanted, but she’s good people. I don’t have time to get to know that many people outside of school or sports, so she helps keep my head on straight.”

Jesse nodded in resignation. “Pretty much everyone I know in this place is at the school. Unfortunately my hobbies tend to be solo activities,” he gestured to his drying running clothes, “So it’s hard to meet people that aren’t crazy teachers.”

“Mmm.” Reyes looked down at his cake plate, gathering crumbs up with the back of his fork. “You said a while ago you did shooting. You still do it?”

“I have all my stuff here, if that’s what you mean. I’m so out of practice, though, I haven’t had time to even think about bringing it out so it’s all still in boxes.” Jesse sighed. “I’ve lived here two  months and I still have an entire room that has to be unpacked.”

Reyes continued to push crumbs around. “I don’t know if you’d be interested, but I do some shooting myself, there’s a range down on the south side that I go to, a day or two a month. If you want to, you know. Get back in practice.” 

With surprise, Jesse realized that Reyes was being...awkward? Shy? Not quite either of those, but something less than the perfectly confident and in control man he’d seen so far. With an inner smile, Jesse nodded. “I’d love that, actually. I took your advice, by the way, and asked Amari about a shooting club. She said it might be a possibility to do as an intramural thing in the spring. Maybe you could help me out with it. Amari said we’d definitely need more than one adult set of eyes.”

Reyes finally looked up from his plate, and met Jesse’s eyes. “I’d like that.” 

A thunk and rattle of a tray with two cups startled both of them. “ _ Café _ .” Sombra swooped back to the coffee bar in a swirl of purple, greeting the new customers at the counter. Jesse took a cup, relishing the warmth spreading through his hands. He took a sip, and his lips involuntarily pulled back from his teeth in a grimace.

Reyes snickered at Jesse’s expression. “Her coffee could wake the dead. I spent months having to add spoons of sugar before I finally got used to it.”

“I might have to add some myself,” said Jesse.

Reyes’s laugh had drawn the attention of the two vaguely familiar girls waiting for their coffee. As Jesse went over to add some sugar, he heard them whispering, with the confidence of teenagers that think they’re quieter than they are. 

“Isn’t that Coach Reyes?” 

“No, Coach Reyes is over there, in the jacket.”

“But that’s his hoodie that he always wears, who’s that wearing his hoodie?!”

Jesse tried to keep his face turned away, but as he walked back to the table he heard an explosion of excited whispers as they sussed out his identity.

“We’ve been discovered,” he muttered to Reyes, with a jerk of his head back at the girls.

Reyes sighed. “Ladies,” he nodded to them as they walked by. “Hi Coach Reyes, hi Mr. McCree,” they chorused, before giggling and walking out the door.

“Welcome to dealing with this shit. Get used to the little bastards attempting to infiltrate every part of your life,” said Reyes, annoyance and resignation in his voice.

“Yeah, I’ve been down that road. Was kinda expectin’ it here, given how close I live to the school. Could be worse, though, my first school we weren’t allowed to go to any bar within district lines, and we were practically surrounded by dry counties. You had to drive forty five minutes just to get a beer.”

Reyes frowned. “I’ve heard of that happening. I understand propriety and all, but we’re adults. Being told where we can’t go, or talk to...it bothers me. You heard about that teacher in Georgia who got fired for having a wine glass in a Facebook photo?”

“Yeah, and it apparently the photo was private, too. I pretty much gave up on social media. I have my class Instagram, but that’s it,” said Jesse.

“I used to have a pretty active Twitter account, kept in touch with some people from the old days. But as the kids started to get accounts, I just felt more uneasy about it. I have my Instagram now, nothing else,” Reyes said.

“Oh, what’s your handle? I’ll follow you,” asked Jesse.

Reyes shifted in his chair. “I don’t mind if you look at it, but I’d prefer if you didn’t follow with your school account. It’s not really school-appropriate.”

Jesse tilted his head.

“Not like that!” Reyes had the faintest touch of pink to his cheeks. “It’s things like the firing range I mentioned. Or a good beer, or whatever. I just don’t want  _ them, _ ” he waved a hand in the direction the girls had left, “To feel that they have unlimited access to our lives. I’m not the most public person.”

“I had no idea,” said Jesse dryly. “You’re such an open book, Mr. Speaks My Language and Doesn’t Tell Me for a Month.”

“Every day you don’t learn something new is a wasted day,” quoted Reyes, right from their school manual.

“Ugh. Whatever,  _ Morrison _ ,” Jesse snickered.

Reyes tilted his head back, draining his coffee. “You ready to head out? Rain’s letting up.”

They brought their mugs and plates over to the counter. Sombra came out from behind it and gave Reyes a hug, surprising Jesse by giving him one as well. 

“You made him laugh, he doesn’t do that enough,” she whispered in his ear. Pulling back: “Don’t be a stranger. I want to be able to talk of home.”

“ _ Adios, mija _ ,” Jesse said, waving goodbye as they walked out the door.

Getting into the van, Reyes turned to Jesse. “Where to, exactly? You said you were close to the school?”

“Yeah, I am. Around the intersection of 25th and Lincoln. You don’t have to drive me if you’re in a hurry, I ran here so I can get back.”

“You’re full of cake and coffee, and it’s still muddy as hell. You’ll end up vomiting and drowning in a mud puddle.”

“Such an optimist.”

They drove in comfortable silence, the radio providing a soft background murmur. As they got to the intersection, Jesse directed him to take a left onto a nearly hidden road surrounded by trees.

“I’ve driven past here literally thousands of times over the years on my way to school, and I didn’t know this road was here,” Reyes said in surprise. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty hidden by the trees. It’s nice - this area isn’t exactly the safest thing in the world, but no one knows it’s here so apparently this little area has pretty much no crime. Another left here.”

“I can see that monstrosity you call a truck.” Peering over at the house it was parked in front of: “You’re in there? I thought you said you were in an apartment.”

“Technically it’s a duplex, I guess, just used to calling it an apartment. I have the top floor, the bottom floor is this guy who works in petrochemicals so he spends most of his time travelling. It’s like having an apartment, not having to do any of the maintenance, but having the benefit of actual quiet.”

“I could use some of that,” sighed Reyes. “I’m just down the street from a bar.”

“Easy to stumble home, though.”

“Yep.”

“Thanks for the ride, and the introduction to Sombra. She seems real nice.”

Reyes smiled a bit. “That she is. See you in a few days.”

Jesse pulled his key from where he’d tucked it in his sock and walked to his place’s entrance, along the side of the house near the back. He saw that Reyes was still sitting in the van, only pulling out when Jesse opened the door. Jesse felt a combination of annoyance at being treated like a teenage girl on a date and fondness at how Reyes seemed to care.

Once upstairs, Jesse startled to catch his reflection in the mirror. He was still wearing Reyes’s hoodie. Given it was now covered in his sweat on the inside and rain on the outside, he’d have to wash it before giving it back. As he pulled it off, he caught the smell of Reyes’s cologne clinging to the inside. Maybe he’d wait a bit before washing it. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Jesse had enjoyed his unexpected outing with Reyes, and realized he might need to be more social for the sake of his mental health. When Genji invited him out for tea on a Wednesday a few weeks later, he surprised them both by accepting. They went to a small breakfast shop and coffeehouse with the incongruous name of What the Crêpe. The crêpes were good, the coffee better, and Genji told him that they had the widest selection of tea available in the area. Jesse appreciated his enthusiasm, but he’d never deviate from his true love of coffee.

“So. Jesse. I must ask you a very important question,” Genji said seriously, setting aside his mug and clasping his hands over his knee. 

“You’re making me nervous,” Jesse said between sips of coffee.

“Jesse McCree. Will you come to homecoming with me?” Genji asked in a breathless voice, hands now clasped in front of him.

“Ah, please tell me you’re just asking me to chaperone. Because you’re a great guy, but…”

Genji laughed. “Just chaperoning. We have to have a minimum of five adults, and right now it’s you, me, Amari, Morrison, and Angela.”

“Morrison? Really? I’d pay the entry fee just to see him all gussied up.”

“As amusing as it is, it’s not worth $45, I promise you.”

“Forty-five dollars?! My last school it was ten per couple!”

Genji shrugged. “For better or worse, it’s one of the only ways that students can raise funds thanks to them tightening the fundraising procedures. The money will go to their senior trip and second semester travel opportunities.”

“I guess, if they know what the deal is. How dressy is it? Like, tux territory?” Jesse’s first school had gone all out for homecoming and prom, with dresses in the thousands of dollars and rented limos and tuxedos everywhere.

“No, no. The students do go all out, but it is semi-formal. I don’t know if you have anything already, but I was going to go shopping for myself this weekend, would you want to come with?”

“Sure. It’s be good for a second opinion. I’m terrible at judging myself.”

Genji eyed the serape tossed around Jesse’s shoulders. “I...see.”

“Hey, now. It’s cold out. This thing is older than both of us combined, and I won’t have it disrespected.”

“I’m not being disrespectful, I’m just wanting the best for you, Jesse.”

“Your love comes with the price of ridicule, but I’ll take it.”

“You are welcome. Another crêpe?”

-x-x-x-x-x-

That Friday once again found Jesse at loose ends. He was meeting Genji right after school to go shopping for Homecoming duds, and he was, surprisingly to him, nervous. He liked Genji - not romantically but as a friend, and he felt like he would somehow disappoint the always-nattily-dressed man. Jesse cleaned his room more thoroughly than usual, wiping everything down with pleasantly scented disinfecting wipes and starting a fan to disperse the fumes. His chairs were left down for once - the cleaning crew was focusing on getting things ready for the dance the next night. Jesse wandered out of his door and found himself in front of the door to the ball room. He shrugged, why not?

Opening the door to the gym, McCree was still blinded by the light after the darkened ball room when he had a whistle blown in his face. Blinking into Reyes’ face, he frowned. “What the hell, man?”

“Shoes off before you take another step. They spent all yesterday waxing the floors for tomorrow, and those stupid boots of yours are not going to ruin it.”

“They’re not stupid,” grumbled Jesse.

“They made you fall on your face the actual moment that we met.”

“Eh. Sacrifices in the name of aesthetics.”

Reyes was frowning down at Jesse’s now sock-clad feet. “Toe socks. Striped toe socks.”

Jesse wiggled his individually wrapped red-orange-and-yellow toes that matched his usual serape. “I told you: don’t doubt my dedication to my aesthetic. You should see what’s on my underwear,” he continued blithely, only to feel his cheeks burning as Reyes’s gaze moved from his feet slowly up to his face.

“Not in school, you degenerate.” As he turned away, all Jesse’s brain could come up with was  _ Well it wasn’t a no? _

Reyes had moved on to berating his students. “Mikey! I know you passed geometry, how are you incapable of making equal measurements?” The kid up on a ladder trying to drape a streamer shot Reyes a finger. “I’m trying, Coach!”

The gym was filled with students rushing around, hanging streamers and balloons and every other possible dance-related decoration, all in the school colors. There seemed to be far more kids than were in Reyes’s class, though, and he bobbed his head in assent when Jesse asked him about it.

“Everyone on student council and the dance committee got released for this period to help out. Plus all the kids who lied and said they were part of it just to get out of class. They’re all working though, so I don’t really care that much. It’s their thing, so they’re the ones that suffer if it’s not done well.”

“What you’re not a dance person?” An exaggerated hand over Jesse’s heart. “Color me shocked.”

“I didn’t go to any of the dances when I was actually in high school, couldn’t find it in myself to care about it now.” Reyes eyed Jesse. “Let me guess. You were Homecoming King.”

Jesse laughed, “No, not at all. I went to senior prom with my best friend and the senior banquet that literally everyone went to, but that was it. Never into them when I was in school, but I like them more now that I have no stake in it. Genji even roped me into chaperoning tomorrow.”

“Just tell me you have some better clothing.”

“We’re going shopping tonight, thank you very much.”

“Ah, going out to the mall with the other teenage girls.”

“N-no! Maybe. I dunno, he’s driving.”

“I might take that over the damn game tonight. We’re going to lose badly, I’m just counting down the hours to it.”

Jesse nodded in sympathy.

Two of Jesse’s AP students had stopped by them while they were talking. “You’ll be at the dance, Mr McCree?” Natalie asked eagerly.

“I am, for my sins,” he said, deadpan. Natalie and Jenny ran off giggling.

Reyes’s eyes looked ready to roll out of his head. “Now I see how you got them to like you. You just charm them all to death.”

“Ugh, no thank you. I have a very firm line, with myself on one side and lawsuits on the other. I am just my normal teacherly self.”

“Yeah, a normal teacher with your pretty-boy face. The outfits kind of ruin it, though, so it evens out.”

“Hey! Again - dedication!” Jesse’s brain whirled - he’d never been accused of being pretty before. Roughly handsome, sure, but not pretty. Must have just been an expression or something.

A sudden crash sent both teachers running to the other side of the gym. The kid on the ladder - what was his name? Mikey, that was it - had slipped off, and he was now holding his wrist.

“Let me see,” Reyes commanded. He flexed it back and forth for a minute or two, asking questions about how much it hurt.

_ He probably has some kind of medical training, between health class and the coaching _ , Jesse realized. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize Reyes was asking him something until the second time his name was repeated. 

“McCree, could you take him to the nurse? I don’t want to leave this lot alone to get into more trouble.” McCree nodded, and escorted the kid out into the hallways.

Once they were out of sight of the other students, a tear leaked down Mikey’s face. Jesse had him in his intro class, and knew he took being ‘strong’ and posturing seriously.

“It’s okay to show that it hurts, you know,” he said, not unkindly. 

Mikey sniffed and savagely wiped his face with his unhurt hand. “I don’t want to disappoint anyone, or Coach.”

“I’m sure Mr Reyes has seen far worse than a few tears at a sprained wrist over the years.”

“Yeah, but I’m just starting the football team! I need to be tough.”

“Tough is good, but it can also get you hurt if you’re not honest about it. I wrestled through a torn shoulder my junior year, and ended up benched for half my senior year because it got injured a lot worse.”

Mikey sullenly sniffed again as they reached the nurse’s office. Angela Ziegler poked her head out, blonde hair going everywhere.

“Hello, gentlemen. Mr. Reyes let me know you were coming.” She ushered Mikey into the room, and as the bell rang Jesse started down the hallway towards the stairs. 

“Jesse!” Genji’s voice came as Jesse opened the door. The other man jogged over, briefcase in hand. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, let me just go to my room and get my stuff, I had to take Mikey Castro to the nurse. Sprained wrist, probably.”

Genji winced. “Knowing him, I’m sure he’s delighted about that.”

“Mmhmm.”

Reaching his room, Jesse and Genji found Reyes waiting outside Jesse’s door. Dangling Jesse’s boots from a hand, he drawled, “Forget something?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse said, then in distress: “Oh no!” He lifted a foot to look at the bottom of his sock, and it was black from dirt.

“What a pity. Maybe you’ll have to get rid of them,” Reyes said in a flat voice devoid of sympathy. 

“Go away, and take your lack of color with you,” Jesse said, snatching his boots back and unlocking his door. “And thank you.”

“ _ De nada _ . See you Monday.” Reyes walked back to the gym.

Jesse gathered his things up, and realized Genji had been uncharacteristically quiet. “What’s up? Second thoughts on shopping?”

Genji’s eyes following Jesse back and forth across the room. “You and Reyes seem close.”

Jesse shrugged as he searched for his lanyard. “We’re specials, man, academics and admin don’t care about us so we’ve gotta band together. No closer than anyone else in the same department.”

“I consider Gabe a friend, and I’m fairly certain he would have left my shoes locked in the gym over the weekend,” Genji said enigmatically.

Finally locating his lanyard, Jesse shoved it in his pocket, slung his bag over his shoulder, and pointed a finger at Genji. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. You don’t shit where you eat, especially at school.”

“Whatever you say, Jesse. I just think it’s nice you’re fitting into the school culture,” Genji stated blandly.

“Uh huh. I can’t believe I’m sayin' this, but for the sake of getting out of this conversation: let’s go turn me into a dress-up doll.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

They ended up at some fancy menswear store Jesse had never heard of, in a mall far enough away that he felt assured there would be no run-ins with students. The manager greeted Genji with familiarity, and after Genji explained what they were looking for, the man looked at Jesse with an experienced and penetrating eye.

“Come to the back, take your clothes off so I can get some measurements,” he instructed. Jesse stripped down to socks, undershirt, and boxer-briefs, shivering slightly in the curtained alcove. 

The manager whipped around him, measuring tape flashing and pencil scratching. “Which way do you dress?” At Jesse’s low ‘left’, he ambled out, muttering to himself, Genji knocked on the wall. “Can I come in?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind seein’ my undercrackers.”

Genji walked in and tilted his head. “Are those...sombreros?” 

Jesse glanced at the print on his underwear and grinned. “Spanish teacher.”

“Hopefully we’ll improve on what’s on the outside.”

“Yeah.” Hesitantly, Jesse asked, “Not to be crass or anythin’, but how much is this gonna cost? It’s not like I buy a lot, but you know how much I make.”

“And you know how much I make, yet I can still dress myself properly. You can certainly afford some decent clothing, and if you buy good quality the first time then you do not have to replace it anytime soon. Plus I get a friends-and-family discount here, which I will extend to you,” Genji finished with a smile.

The manager bustled back in, with an armful of clothing. “Try these, pants first.”

Jesse shook out the beautifully tailored charcoal grey pants, and shook his head. “They’re too small.”

“No, you just don’t know how to wear clothing that wasn’t mass produced.”

With a glare at Genji, Jesse slipped the pants on. They did fit, just very...closely. The manager pulled and prodded at the fit as Jesse stood with undershirt rucked up. 

“I feel like everyone can see my business,” he muttered.

“Your fault for having the business that you do,” said Genji breezily.

Apparently satisfied with the pants, the manager pushed a white shirt at Jesse. Even he could admit that it looked good once on.

“You should always look for shirts marked ‘athletic fit’. They will be broad enough in the shoulders and chest but still fit closely,” the manager instructed.

After came a red tie with gold threads interwoven, a charcoal vest to match the pants, and a blazer. Jesse looked at himself in the mirror - he looked incredibly good, just...not quite like himself.

“If you wear cowboy boots with this I will hide dead fish in your classroom,” Genji said casually.

Jesse grimaced at him in the mirror. Genji didn’t need to know that Jesse had some black boots, that should fit under even these pants. 

Jesse paid - happily not as much as he’d feared - and they headed out, loaded down with bags. “Thanks for all of this, man. I know that as a grown man I should care more about my appearance, but it just never was a priority.”

“We all have what we focus on in life. One of my hobbies is fashion, and I am glad I could share it with you. Now, though, we should talk about what’s going on with…” Genji gestured to Jesse’s head and facial hair, “...that.”

“No thanks, partner, that’s where I draw the line. No touching my hair.”

“You have split ends.”

“So?”

Genji had stopped, Jesse having walked forwards a few steps. He looked back to see Genji cock a head towards the hair salon he had paused next to. “No, Genji! Clothing is one thing, but I like my hair the length that it’s at for a reason. No cutting.”

“Just the very ends, the damaged bits! Come on, I need a trim too. Do it with me, pleeeease?” Genji wheedled.

Jesse raised an uncomfortable hand to his head. It was a little rough looking. He looked at Genji, who had seen his hand movement, and knew he’d already lost. He exhaled in resignation and walked in with the other man.

To Jesse’s relief, the woman in charge of his precious locks seemed to understand his feelings. He sat there damply as her long nails separated out sections of his hair after washing it. “I’m just going to trim up the ends, and take a little length off the back where it’s most damaged. Just a little, I promise.”

Jesse closed his eyes as the scissors started snipping, determined not to open them until it was too late. The hairdresser finished reassuringly quickly, blow drying his hair and putting some kind of product in. 

“All done!” Jesse looked to find himself reassured by what looked back. Not much was gone, but it was shorter in the back while keeping the longer pieces in the front - it looked much like his hair did when he was younger, in fact. Running a hand through he was surprised - “What did you put in here? It’s really nice.”

“You have good hair, you just have to take care of it. This is the conditioner I used, you might want to try it.”

Jesse paid, buying the conditioner and adding a decent tip, and walked back to find Genji under a big dryer thing with his head covered in foil.

“You look good! I told you it would be worth it.”

“What...what are you doing.”

“Dying my hair! I like green.”

“Green. Not what I generally think of as a color for hair. Didn’t you just talk to me about dressing more like an adult?”

“Pssh. That doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun. I won’t be too much longer, it’s almost done processing.”

Jesse grabbed a seat, pulling out his phone. He scrolled through his class instagram, replying to comments as he went. He left a few more comments on coworkers’ pages - including one about school-appropriate dress code on Genji’s. Idly flicking through the explore tab, a flash of purple caught his eye. He clicked on a picture to see Sombra’s smiling face, hair glowing under the lights of what looked like her cafe. He didn’t recognize the account’s name but clicked on it anyways. It was full of ...quiet pictures. A gathering of pigeons at the side of a pool of water, cracked asphalt, an urban fox slipping down an alley, faded graffiti. Few people that weren’t at a distance, except for the one of Sombra. Pictures of patterns - ceiling beams and rows of lights, floorboards and interestingly faded carpet. 

Jesse stopped suddenly to see his own face. Well, not really - he was pictured from the side, sitting on bleachers while hunched over with hair in his face and writing in a notebook, a small figure tucked on the side of a large empty gym. Jesse remembered that day, he had been running the cross country team around the gym’s suspended track as it was unexpectedly cold and he didn’t want the kids getting sick before a match. He had been trying to figure out how many more permission slips they needed, before Reyes had walked up, and offered help in calling families. This...this must be Reyes’s account. He felt his face turning red before he reminded himself - Reyes said it was okay if he saw it, he just didn’t want Jesse’s school account to follow it. Jesse memorized the name of the account before closing out, setting his phone down thoughtfully.

“Are you okay?” Genji asked, walking up. “You look flustered.”

“I’m fine,” said Jesse, standing and looking at Genji. He had been expecting something like astroturf, but it turned out that Genji had put some dark forest green streaks into his black hair. “That looks...way better than I thought it would.”

“It goes with my outfit for tomorrow,” Genji said nonchalantly. “I told you, I know fashion. Now let’s grab something to eat and get back, I could eat a horse, I swear.”

As they walked out, Jesse ran a hand through his hair again and smiled. He had people that liked him. Knowing that you were someone else’s friend, and that it wasn’t just a one sided friendship, had been harder and harder to determine as he got older. What was professional courtesy, and what was someone thinking you had value as a person? If nothing else, he had Genji. And Reyes, too, maybe. At least he wouldn’t have to sort through his complicated feelings on  _ that _ relationship until Monday. 


	4. Chapter 4

Jesse parked his car at the edge of the unusually full lot, and walked to the school. He bypassed the packed main doors, going for a side door that he could badge himself into. The hallways were all dark, but echoes from the gym bounced their way around the entire school, giving everything a surreal reflective quality. Jesse emerged into the main hallway, blasted with light and sound. A waving arm showed him Genji’s location, and he wound his way through frantic teenagers making last minute repairs to the whole fiasco.

“I guess the hair does match,” Jesse said as he met Genji - he wore a suit of such a deep forest green that it was nearly black, with a grey shirt and white tie. It should have looked ridiculous, but somehow it all worked. 

“And look at you! Nearly respectable, and not a gaudy pattern in sight.” Genji said in reply, lightly punching his shoulder to show he was only teasing.

“Should we be doing anything right now? I feel weird standin’ here while they’re all going nuts.”

“No, we just wait for them all to get done.” Raising his voice: “You all have fifteen minutes! Then I need the ticket takers to come over here to me and Mr McCree, and the rest of you can go inside.”

“Ticket takers?”

“Yes, two students will man the booth starting at 8, they’ll switch off every half hour, we’ll stop letting people in after 10. Dance goes until midnight, and the clean up crew will come tomorrow at ten. Be glad you don’t have to supervise that - half of them are hungover and don’t know how to handle it, and there is always some truly nasty stuff hidden in the corners.”

“Huh. We’d always had our dances offsite, so no one ever had to worry about cleanup.”

“Hello, gentlemen.” Jesse looked up to see Ana Amari and Angela Ziegler walking towards them. Amari was wearing a shimmery long-sleeved black dress with mysterious draping that Jesse didn’t understand but looked nice, and Angela had on a knee-length white and gold feather patterned dress that fluttered in the breeze from outside. 

“Hi Angela, Ms Amari. Is Mr Morrison with you?” Jesse asked politely. He didn’t know either of the women well yet, but they had both appeared to be kind and competent so far. 

Amari shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s coming, to be honest. Those rains over on the east side? His basement got flooded and he was yelling something about a sump pump the last I heard. He was making calls, if not him then I’m sure someone will come.”

They stood and watched as the students rushed around like so many ants, Genji bellowing out a five minute warning. Eventually Genji clapped his hands loudly, and activity came to a stop. 

“All right, my friends, are you ready to dance?” The students cheered loudly enough for the adults to wince. “All right then! If you left any materials around, put them in the science hallway. Alexa and Ashley, you’re first on deck for ticket taking. Everyone else, go on in!”

A final rush as everyone put items away and filed into the gym, Amari turning off the main lights so that the entryway was pleasantly dim. “I’ll stay out here for a while, you go in and make sure no one doctors the punch,” Amari said.

The gym had come a long way from the few streamers Jesse had seen yesterday. There were shimmers in the darkness of the ceiling, and everything was decorated with the school colors of blue and silver. There was silver everywhere - glitter, mylar, tinsel...it gave everything an otherworldly quality as the lights reflected and refracted into scattered shards.

“It looks a lot nicer than I thought it would,” came a low voice at Jesse’s side. He turned to find none other than Reyes standing next to him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Morrison called in a panic, something about his house floating away. I got him to agree to not doing one of my walkthroughs if I came,” Reyes smirked in satisfaction.

“That’s not...allowed, is it?” Walkthroughs were part of the administrative evaluative process, and in Jesse’s past experience were sacrosanct.

“No, but Jack has been my evaluator for eighteen years now. It’s not like he doesn’t know how I run a class.”

“Mmmm.” As the men watched the students rush around doing final touches and new students trickle in with excitement on their faces, Jesse snuck a look at Reyes. 

He looked  _ good _ , and for the first time that Jesse had seen, apparently owned something with color. Black dress pants and shoes, a burgundy turtleneck sweater under a well-fitting grey blazer with a pocket square poking out. Without his customary hood, Reyes was revealed to have tousled curls on top of his head, cut closer at the sides. With his heavy brows and trimmed goatee, he looked like the platonic ideal of a crush-worthy college professor, perhaps minus glasses. Jesse turned his attention back to the dance floor, hoping the dark would hide any red in his traitorous cheeks.

Genji wandered over. “Hi, Gabe. Roped in by Morrison?” At Reyes’s grunt of assent, Genji asked, “How’d we do at the game yesterday?”

Reyes sighed. “We’re not a football school. I know that, the kids know that. Doesn’t mean it still doesn’t pinch when we get beat that hard. Did see some familiar faces, though. Remember the Parma twins? They showed up.”

As Reyes and Genji exchanged memories of past students, Jesse slipped away. He was walking along the edge of the bleachers, intending to say hi to Angela, when he spotted Felix near the punch bowl, looking furtive. Jesse waited until his head was turned, then popped up next to him. “Hello, Felix.”

The boy jumped a mile, and Jesse had to bite his inner cheek in order not to laugh in his face. The kid had a flask in his hand and a terrified look on his face. Jesse held out a hand, and the kids handed the flask over. 

“Will..will I get it back? It’s my brother’s.”

“Walk away and tell your friends not to try this again, and you don’t get written up and in trouble with bigger fish than your brother.” Felix turned white and scampered off, as Jesse tucked the flask in his inner suit pocket. He hadn’t been that stupid as a kid, had he? Probably was.

He finally made his way to Angela, and they talked easily about how their year was going. She’d been the nurse at OHS for almost ten years, and was a charming woman. It turned out that she was actually dating Ana’s daughter Fareeha.

“Is she coming tonight? It’d be interesting to meet Ana’s daughter.”

“No, sadly. She is in Cambodia at the moment. She is the head of a mission team for Médecins Sans Frontières, it’s how we met, actually. She is not a doctor, but was trained as a corpsman and acts as the liaison and guard for the group.”

They talked easily for some time, until Genji beckoned him over.

“Come and dance, Jesse!”

“I don’t know if you want to subject all these poor innocent people to that sight, friend.”

“That’s the point of these dances, the more ridiculous you look the better!”

Laughing, Jesse stepped to the side to shed his blazer. He rolled his sleeves up to his forearms - it was getting warm with all the dancing bodies in the room. Waving his hands in the air like he just didn’t care, he was cheered onto the dance floor by Genji and a crowd of students. 

Forty five minutes later, Jesse stumbled out of the crowd. It was surprisingly hard work to both keep an eye on the kids as well as try and have a good time himself. If he had to pull one more grinding couple apart… ugh. His head throbbed from the music and lights, and he wound his way over to the punch bowl to down a cup. Thankfully it seemed to just be punch, hopefully Felix and friends would stay scared off. 

His head was still pounding. Jesse decided to sneak away to his room, he had a bottle of painkillers there that would be very welcome at the moment. He walked along the edges of the gym, looked around to make sure no students were following, and stole into the room.

Three steps later, and Jesse was crashing to the floor. He hadn’t turned on the light as he didn’t want to light up the gym like a spotlight, and there was stuff in here that hadn’t been a day ago.

A bright light shone in his face and a voice came - “McCree?”

“Get that out of my face, please.”

“Oh, sorry.” The light lowered, revealing itself to be Reyes’s phone. “I saw the door close, and thought it was some students sneaking away. What are you doing here?”

“My head’s killing me from all of…” he waved an arm in the direction of the gym, “That, so I was going to grab some painkillers from my room.”

“I hope you have more than just painkillers there,” Reyes said, concern in his voice. “Look.”

Jesse looked at his right arm, which was throbbing from what he thought was the fall. He had managed to catch the edge of a wire basket, and there was a vicious cut going down the side of his arm. “Oh man,” he said, tilting his arm so the blood ran downwards, away from his cuffed sleeve. “This shirt is new.”

“Go to your room, I’ll grab my first aid kit out of my office,” Reyes said before disappearing...and taking the light with him. 

“Damnit Reyes, get back here!” Jesse called, but with the pounding of the music he was unlikely to be heard. 

Jesse sat up, and began the painstaking process of getting his phone out of his right back pocket with his left, uninjured arm. He got it out and flicked the light on. He saw that he had tripped over a box of streamers. Damn kids. Gingerly getting up, he made his way back to his room through the darkened hallways. He keyed open his door, turning on only the farthest strip of lights. Tossing his blazer on the table where it landed with a clank - thank you, Felix - he opened his bottom right drawer to pull out a bottle of ibuprofen and some paper towels. Laying his arm down on the towels, he futilely tried to get the bottle open one handed. He was sitting on top of a table staring sullenly at it when Reyes opened the door.

“You left me alone in the dark,” Jesse said, aware of the whining tone in his voice.

“Oh, sorry,” said Reyes, not sounding very apologetic. “Take your painkillers.”

“...I can’t get the bottle open,” muttered Jesse.

Reyes walked over, large first aid kit in hand, and popped open the top. “Here,” he shook three pills into Jesse’s hand. “You got something to down them with?”

Jesse snickered, “Well, I have a flask I took off of Felix Romero.”

“Anything good in it?”

“I didn’t check.”

At Jesse’s gesture, Reyes fished the flask of out Jesse’s blazer. He unscrewed the lid and took a sniff. “Whew. That is some shitty, shitty tequila.”

“My ancestors are weeping,” said Jesse. “Um. Wait, I think I left my one water bottle here, right in that drawer by your foot,” he directed Reyes.

Reyes pulled out the steel water bottle, along with a large bottle of sake. He turned to Jesse, raising an eyebrow. 

“It’s not mine! I mean, it is mine, but not for long. I swear I don’t drink on the job. It’s a thank you and birthday present for Genji, I meant to bring it home but he drove me last night and I never got around to it.”

“Calm down, teacher's pet. I’m not gonna turn you in.”

Jesse drank his pills down and waited while Reyes opened his kit. “You could rival Angela with what you’ve got in there.”

“Pretty much. You know what wrestling is like, sometimes you have to stabilize something before the kid goes back in and injures themselves more, and it’s not like football’s much better. I can’t do stitches, but I can at least set fingers and do steristrips and wraps.”

Jesse sat quietly as Reyes cleaned his wound with saline and gauze. It was nasty under the blood, going through the first layer of skin. “I’ll clean this up, but if it isn’t scabbing soon then you might want to stop by the actual doctor. Just don’t do any physical activity, anything that might stretch the skin and open it up.”

“Man, and I had this great run planned tomorrow, too.”

“Ha right. Oh, wait, you’re serious?”

Jesse shrugged with one shoulder, as Reyes’s warm hand held his arm together while he rooted around in the kit with the other. “I like running. I hated it in high school but had to do it while I was in training, and found that once you get good at it, it’s the best thing for calming your mind.”

“Training?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse laughed embarrassedly. “My pre-teacher days. I was part of the National Park Service.”

“Like...Ranger Rick? With the little hats? Hey, now, don’t hit the guy who’s fixing you up!” said Reyes to Jesse’s threateningly raised hand.

“No, not really. Those guys are the regular park rangers. I was a commissioned officer, part of the law enforcement branch. The Law Enforcement Rangers are trained in...just about everything, from general law enforcement to firefighting to medical, whatever you need where you’re stationed, in addition to the usual park ranger stuff. My area was the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, our main issue was that we were right by a big drug running route so we saw a lot more action than some places.”

Reyes’s fingers were gentle, warm hands turning Jesse’s arm and slowly covering it in suture strips. “I was in the Marines,” he said quietly. “Ended up in Marine Division Recon as a diver, but just… I started to want to do something else with my life.”

“Same here, with the doing something else thing. We had a lot of contact with kids, giving tours and stuff through the caverns. I liked that part, the teaching. Got my certification and didn’t look back.”

“What brought you out here, from New Mexico?”

“The usual. Had a bad breakup, kept living there for awhile and realized that my family was mostly gone and everything was just...stale. The breakup didn’t make me move, but it did make me reevaluate whether I was actually happy where I was.”

“Mmmm.”

Reyes continued to work in the comfortable silence that fell. Jesse felt like there was tension, but the good kind, like when you started a run and your ligaments were still just that bit too tight, needing time and effort to stretch them out. Or maybe he was loopy from tiredness, painkillers, adrenaline, and having a good looking man put his hands all over him.

Reyes laid a doubled piece of gauze over everything, holding it in place with medical tape. “You should be good, let it dry out overnight and remember what I said about seeing a doctor if it’s not on its way to healing.”

“Yessir,” Jesse smiled up at him, aware of how close their faces were. Reyes looked into his eyes for a moment before pulling back. “We should get back to the dance, they’ll be wondering where we are.” 

Jesse slid off the table, tossing his water bottle and the flask in his bottom drawer. He flexed his arm as Reyes watched. “Good as new. Well, almost.”

They walked to the doors and slipped into the ball room. “Hold on, for a sec,” said Jesse, who flicked his phone light on and moved the boxes by the door out to the side. “I’m not falling again.”

Hand on the door handle, Jesse stopped when Reyes said, “Wait.” He motioned for Jesse to move aside and peered through the crack. “There’s a crowd of like ten students right in front of us.”

“So?” Jesse shrugged.

Reyes stared at Jesse the best he could in the darkness. “Do you feel like dealing with a dozen students’ reactions to a couple of teachers sneaking out of a dark equipment room?”

Jesse was glad the dark hid the look on his face. “I guess not.”

They stood there for a few minutes, Jesse leaning against the door and Reyes perched on the edge of a cart. The music shifted to a slower song, and Reyes moved to watch even more students stand in front of the door through the crack. 

“They’re all so afraid to dance to a slow song, fuckin’ terrified of being vulnerable. They need to live a little.”

Jesse laughed quietly. “Rich coming from you.”

“What?” said Reyes. “I have lived plenty.”

“Okay, Mr Always Wearing Black and Doesn’t Like Dances. Keep livin’ that life.”

“I am wearing color right now, thank you very much. And as for the other,” Reyes held out a hand to Jesse. “Dance with me.”

Jesse raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Fine, then, no pressure.” Reyes dropped his hand, but Jesse moved to catch it.

“I didn’t say no. Just surprised.” 

Jesse stepped closer and curled an arm around Reyes’s shoulder, as Reyes slipped an arm around his waist, their other hands in the air, careful of Jesse’ arm. They were close in height, temples grazing each other. Reyes smelled of that same citrusy cologne from before, a little stronger now he was so close. Jesse could feel the other man’s breath on his cheek, could feel several fingers pressed in the space between vest and waistband on his lower back. 

Close darkness around them, the muffled sound of music from behind the doors - for just this minute, they were the only people in the world.

Jesse raised his head, hair brushing Reyes’s forehead. Reyes did the same, and they locked eyes from inches away in the dimness. “Jes-” Reyes started, before he was interrupted by a loud bang coming from right outside the room, accompanied a second later by screams. 

They sprang apart and pulled the door open, forcing their way through the crowd. Blue-haired Dominic held a boy Jesse didn’t recognize against the bleachers, arm pulled back for another punch. Jesse grabbed Dominic, immobilizing his arms in a pin while Reyes went to the other boy, who was bleeding a little from a cut above his eye. 

“Dominic! Melvin! What is going on?!” Reyes voice cut through the hubbub like a knife, quieting the boys. Neither would look at him or Jesse in the face. Shae Langford stepped forward, her arm around a crying girl. 

“Melvin was coming on to Sarah, Dominic’s sister,” she gestured to the crying girl. “And when he wouldn’t back off, Dominic stepped in.” She looked in panic at Jesse, still holding Dominic. “Don’t be mad at him, she’s only in eighth grade.”

Genji stepped forward, ushering students away and back to the dance floor. “Okay, folks, floor show’s over! Let’s get back to dancing, you have less than an hour left!”

As the party got started back up, Amari stepped forward and gestured for Reyes and Jesse to follow her with the boys. “Gabriel, may we use your office?”

At his nod, she opened the door and turned on the light. “Mr. Phillips first, please,” gesturing to Reyes’s charge. Reyes, Dominic, and Jesse sat on the bleachers. 

“I’m sorry, Coach, Mr McCree. I just couldn’t-” Reyes cut the boy off, “Don’t explain to us, you just have to talk to Ms Amari. Take this time to think about what you want to say.”

Melvin eventually exited the room, head cast downwards. Amari poked her head out. “Mr. Phillips’ parents will be coming for him. Gabriel, could you go and wait for them at the west entrance?”

As Reyes walked off with the boy, Amari gestured for Dominic to come in. Jesse waited, assuming his own escort services would be needed soon. Sure enough, Amari asked him to take Dominic to the front entrance a few minutes later.

“Is your sister coming?” he gently asked the boy.

Dominic shook his head, “No, she’s staying at Shae’s tonight. I texted her.” 

Jesse nodded. “Okay, let’s go.” They walked out through the main hall, past the metal detectors to the main entrance of the building. They leaned against the railing of the garden that sat to the west of them. 

“You okay?” asked Jesse quietly. “I know we’re not close, but you can always talk to me and I’ll keep your confidence.”

Dominic shook his head, in confusion or negation. “I don’t know, Mister. My sister used to just be my sister, and now she’s a person and I don’t like the way people look at her.” 

Jesse nodded. “Protection is good. Suffocation isn’t. Make sure that she doesn’t want the attention before stepping in. And perhaps step in with words first, not fists.”

The kid scuffed his foot against the asphalt. “That’s pretty much what Ms. Amari said.”

“Then maybe it’s decent advice.”

Lights flashed, and they looked up to see a car winking its headlights at them. “That’s me.” Dominic took a step, then stepped back and gave Jesse an awkward little half-hug. “Thanks, Mister.” 

“Anytime,” Jesse murmured as the kid ran off to the car.

He walked back in, finding Reyes and Amari just inside the gym doors. “Dominic get out okay?” asked Amari.

Jesse nodded. “What’s going to happen to them?”

Amari grimaced. “To be honest I just want to send Dominic off with a pat on the head, but he did fight on school grounds. He gets a week of detention. Melvin, though...I just talked to the sister, Sarah. He’s looking at some in school suspension, at the least. I need to talk it over with Jack first.” 

They all looked up as the music died down and Genji’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “Okay, folks, Overwatch High School Homecoming is over for the year!” He let the cheers die down. “I know you want to continue the party, but we all have places to be. Please put all trash in the proper receptacles, make sure to take your coats and shoes with you, and if you lose track of anything there will be a lost and found box in the office. Have a good night, and get out of here.”

Angela and Genji walked over to the other teachers, and they all watched the students tiredly gather their things. As the last of them trickled out, they shut the lights off and closed the doors. 

Walking out to the parking lot, Amari and Angela peeled off first, followed by Genji. Reyes’s motorcycle was parked a few spots away from Jesse.

“Reyes…” Jesse trailed off, no idea of where the sentence should go. 

“Don’t overthink things,” said Reyes, swinging a leg over the motorcycle and grabbing his helmet. “Go for a run. Clear your head. See you Monday.” He pulled out as Jesse weakly waved goodbye.

Jesse got into his old truck, exhaling in relief as it turned over. Exhaustion trickled in as he headed for home, the excitement of everything fading into tiredness. He wasn’t sure how he was going to react to whatever happened tonight, but he knew he needed sleep first. Jesse drove away from the school into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

Jesse surveyed his classroom. His serape was wrapped perfectly around his shoulders, his hat was tilted just right, his spurs on his boots were shiny, and his crossed low-slung belts accentuated his hips in a way he knew looked good. The Wild West had come to Overwatch High for Halloween.

“Okay, now. If I have the subject ‘ _Maria y Juan_ ’,” he wrote this on the whiteboard, with a blank line next to it, “And the adjective ‘ _cansados'_ ,” he wrote this as well, “What verb goes in the middle? We have to figure out two things. First, do we use ‘ _soy_ ’ or ‘ _estoy_ ’?”

Silence.

“Let’s break it down. What does ' _cansados_ ’ mean?”

Jillian raised a hand, “Tired?”

“Excellent. Now does anyone remember when you use ‘ _soy’_? Markus, what was the very first thing you learned to say in Spanish.”

“Uh, that I’m American?”

“Yep. And did you use ‘ _soy_ ’ or ‘ _estoy_ ’?”

“ _Soy_.”

“Right. This is because you are an American and it’s not going to change. You use ‘ _soy_ ’ for something that is a permanent thing, part of your identity. I am American, I am a man, I am a teacher. _Estoy_ is for a more temporary state of being: I’m hungry, I’m feeling sick, I am here.”

Heads nodded. Jesse continued, “So in this case where Maria and Juan are tired, we use?”

“ _Estoy_ ,” chorused the class.

Jesse smiled. “Correct.” Turning to write on the board, he found himself face to face with a tall black figure, hooded leather coat swirling around a bone-white mask. Backing up a step in surprise, Jesse found himself suddenly sitting on the table behind him as the students laughed and called out, “Hi Coach!”

Peering closer, he saw a light brown eye close in a wink. “Charming,” Jesse muttered, as Reyes shrugged and sniggered quietly.

Jesse turned back to the class, “Apparently you’ve been doing so badly that the Grim Reaper himself has come to put me out of my misery.” Reyes lifted a gauntleted hand - were those _claws_ on the fingertips? - and traced a light slashing motion across Jesse’s neck. Jesse rolled his eyes and swallowed heavily.

“Okay, Mr Reaper. Can you tell me what verb to put in here?” He gestured to the whiteboard.

“ _Están_ …” came a deep, eerie rasp.

“Very good! You get a candy.” Jesse tossed a Jolly Rancher at Reyes’s head, which he caught handily.

“Awww, I want candy…” whined Roger.

“Then tell me how to say ‘we are,’ using ‘ _estoy_ ’.”

“ _E..estamos_?” Jesse threw a candy at him. The class then devolved into Jesse and Reyes throwing candy with pinpoint accuracy at the students as they tried to answer the vocab questions Jesse yelled at them.

As the bell rang and the students trickled out, Jesse turned to Reyes. “So you just cared so much about conjugating _estoy_ that you couldn’t stay away, hmm?”

Reyes pushed his mask up. “Ugh, this thing is sweaty. Eh, I’ve got planning this period and decided to poke my head around, see what everyone was dressed up as. I’m less than surprised at your outfit, cowboy.”

Jesse shrugged, “Hey, it’s not like I didn’t own it all already.”

A claw tapped against Jesse’s massive belt buckle, reading ‘BAMF’ in shiny brass. “Even that?”

“I swear that one was a present.” Jesse hid his shaking breath at where Reyes’s hand was.

“Uh huh. A present,” Reyes said, unconvinced. He glided to the door, his swirling coat making his steps smooth. “Are you still painting the skulls for _Día de los Muertos_ tomorrow?”

Jesse grinned, “Yep! And doing some face painting, too. You should stop by. Bring your mask, too.”

“I just might,” Reyes pulled his mask back down. “ _Death...walks among you.._ ” he rasped out and disappeared through the doorway to the sound of Jesse’s laughter.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“...and so November 1st is actually not the Day of the Dead, but instead the _Día de los Inocentes_ , honoring the children that have passed on All Saints’ Day. Tomorrow, November 2nd, is the full _D_ _ía de los Muertos_ , on All Souls’ Day.”

Jesse mouth pulled up in a half smile to see Reyes slip through the door of his classroom and take a seat at the side, as he continued to lecture. “Remember, every Latinx and Hispanic culture has different traditions, I’m telling you mostly about the Mexican ones anfd specifically the ones I grew up with, because that’s what I know best. Now who remembers the name for the sugar skulls?”

“Calaveras!” chorused the class.

“Very nice. And other skull representations, including the skulls and masks that you all will be doing today are…?”

Silence from the room, before Reyes rumbled, “Calacas.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reyes. Okay, you lot, you know where everything is. Group A will paint skulls, Group B, paint each other. Keep it school appropriate, or I will paint my own mask on you and you won’t like it.”

The students scattered, as Jesse hit a button on his computer and guitar music flowed out of his speakers.

“Gonna let me paint you up?” asked Jesse, leaning against the table next to Reyes.

“Sure. It’s been so long since I’ve done any _Día de los Muertos_ stuff at all. Fell out of practice when I moved away from LA.”

“You’re...what, Mexican? Mixed?” Jesse asked, pulling over a chair and gesturing for Reyes to move to it.

“Dunno, to be honest. Mom was Mexican, don’t know about Dad. And she died long enough ago I’ll never find out.”

Jesse pulled over his own chair, and put down some face paints on the table. “I’ll light a candle for her on my _ofrenda_.”

“ _Gracias_.”

“You bring that mask?”

“Yeah, here. Why?”

“Put it down here so I can see it, and close your eyes.”

Jesse pushed his hood back, taking a second to appreciate the features in front of him. “Don’t want to get anything on this.” He took a sponge and pot of paint, and began turning Reyes’s face into a blank white canvas. His hands were gentle as he worked the paint in.

<”What happened here, if you don’t mind me asking?”> Jesse asked in Spanish, tracing one of Reyes’s facial scars with the sponge. Reyes’s brow furrowed, and Jesse gently tapped it smooth with the sponge. <”Never mind. You don’t have to say.”>

<”Not much to say, really. Had a dive go bad, ordinance exploded underwater. Didn’t lose an eye so I call it a win.”>

<“Sounds painful, even keeping the eye.> Wait, hold on.” Jesse stood, switching back to English. “Brian, there are about a hundred different calacas patterns scattered around this room, yes?” Assent. “And what have you drawn on Daisy?” Murmur, looking at the floor. “That’s right, you drew Spiderman. We could get into the intricacies of Miles Morales’ role in the Spiderman canon, but instead I think you should check with Daisy to see if that’s what she wanted, and the rubric on the board to see if that’s what you should have done. Okay?”

<”Teenagers,>” Jesse sighed as he sat down.

<”You’re good with them, though. You should have seen the last Spanish teacher. He was an asshole, and the kids didn’t seen to be having nearly as much fun, or even learning as much.>”

Jesse was quiet for a moment, pulling out a paintbrush and black paint. <”Thank you. That means a lot from you.”>

Gabe smiled - “Don’t do that! You’ll crack the paint!” - <”Don’t worry, I’ll be back to calling you an asshole in no time.”>

“Oooh, Coach Reyes swoooore,” Roger plopped himself on the desk next to Jesse.

“How do you even know, it’s three months into your first Spanish class.” asked Reyes.

“Pretty much everyone shows up with a workin’ knowledge of profanity,” Jesse said, drawing outlines on Reyes’s face. “Now if they could only focus on their prepositions with the same care. How’s your skull comin’, Roger? Ready to show it to me?”

Grumbling, the boy slunk off back to his table.

<”I guess if we talk shit, we have to make sure not to call it ‘shit’,”> Reyes said.

<”Indeed.”> Drawing a line downwards, Jesse murmured. <”Hmm. You have great cheekbones.”>

If he hadn’t been so close, Jesse never would have seen the faint red that touched Reyes’s face, visible just around his eyes and on his neck around the paint.

Jesse’s pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone to glance at the alarm. “Dang, that’s my five minute warnin’. Can you stick around for just a few, after class? I just have to fill in the sides and eyes.”

“Sure. It’s actually my second planning. Union rep,” he said, to Jesse’s quizzical glance.

“Ugh that’s right, I forgot. I’m thankful you guys exist, but the stipend and extra plan just don’t sound worth the work, man.”

“I felt like that my first few years, but at this point I’ve done pretty much everything, so it really is just another plan.”

Jesse clapped his hands, getting the students’ attention and directing them to clean up. They wouldn’t do a great job, but it’d be enough to get ready for the next class. He quickly photographed the skulls and the nametags of who worked on them, before setting them aside to be washed. He then got pictures of the students’ faces. They looked pretty great, hastily repaired Spiderman aside. He let them out, chattering about how good each other looked.

Smile on his face, he turned back to Reyes, who had perched himself on the side of Jesse’s desk. “Mind if I stay here? My ass was going numb in that little chair.”

“Sure.” Jesse grabbed the paint and brush. “Close your eyes.” He tapped Reyes’s knees, shifting them so he could fit between. The other man’s thick thighs bracketed Jesse’s own. Controlling his breathing carefully so he didn’t think about their position, Jesse stroked a wash of black under Reyes’ sharp cheekbones.

He brushed black over Reyes’s eyelids and around the sockets. “Stop twitching.”

“It tickles.”

“Okay, just one more thing…” Jesse grabbed a thin brush and brushed a few lines onto his forehead. “Done.”

Reyes opened his eyes. It ruined the look a bit, his bright eyes so different from the black pits of the mask, but it was an awesome effect.

“You’ll be terrifyin’ children all day.”

“Hell with the children, I’m sneaking into Jack’s office first.” Pulling out his phone, Reyes pulled the camera up. “...wow, this is really good. You have a future in makeup if the whole teaching thing doesn’t work out for you.”

“Well, we always tell the kids to have a fallback, guess I’m settin' a good example.”

Reyes stood up, Jesse stepping back a few steps. He put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “Thanks, kid, thanks a lot. I’ll make sure to send a picture to Sombra, she’ll get a hell of a kick out of it.”

Jesse smiled. “Pay me back by scaring the shit out of Morrison.”

Reyes flipped his hood up, adopting his raspy evil voice from before: “ _The reckoning draws near…_ ” and swirled out of the room.

Later that night at home, Jesse sat on his couch, feet kicked up, and turned on the news. He listened with half an ear as he flicked through his phone. After spending five minutes ignoring the app and telling himself it didn’t matter, he opened up instagram and looked up Reyes’s page. There was a photo of Reyes in the face makeup, Jesse recognized the bits of background as Sombra’s cafe. The caption read, “sometimes it takes a friend with the right tools to bring out the real you #díadelosmuertos”. Jesse felt a warmth inside. He’d figured they were friends by this point, but it was one thing to think it and another for the other person to say it online.

Clicking out of the app, Jesse let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. He officially had a crush on Reyes, something he’d been avoiding admitting for quite awhile now. If only those damn kids hadn’t started that fight… Oh well. None of it mattered - Jesse wasn’t sure of the exact rules here, but every previous school he was at there were strict rules about fraternization between the teachers. After moving halfway across the country and signing his contract, it wasn’t worth it to lose it for a crush on someone who might not even feel the same way. Jesse slumped sideways, the shapes on the television no longer making sense. He just needed some sleep. Maybe a run to clear his head tomorrow.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Midterms. Jesse had endless essays to grade, followed by dozens of hand written tests. He cursed the teachers who had computer tests or scantrons and their ease in grading. After clicking around on Google maps and trying to think of somewhere quiet where he wouldn’t run into students, he realized he already knew of somewhere to go - Sombra’s cafe. After trying to find it on the map based off of where he had run to and where he thought Reyes had driven him, he concluded that he needed to get the actual name of the place.

Jesse pulled out his phone and stared at it for a minute. He had Reyes’s number, he had the numbers of everyone at the school because once someone started a group text about someone’s birthday get-together or warning about walkthroughs, it was necessary to know who was who. He’d never actually used it, though. Telling himself he was acting worse than his students, he opened up a new message.

Jesse McCree (2:41 pm): hey reyes, this is jesse mcCree. i wanted to know if I could get the actual name/address of sombra’s cafe off of you, i just need somewhere quiet to do work :-( boo midterms.

Gabriel Reyes (2:43 pm): Sure, it’s the Dorado Cafe, 254 W 49th. Tell Sombra I said hi

Jesse McCree (2:44 pm): will do hombre

 _Well, that was relatively painless_ , Jesse thought as he gathered his things. If nothing else Sombra’s hellishly strong coffee would wake him up on this gloomy Saturday. Maybe she could make a mocha or something, anything a little more palatable.

McCree walked into the Dorado Cafe fifteen minutes later in a gust of wind. It took most of his strength to push the door shut enough to latch.

“Woo, looks nasty out there,” Sombra said, coming out from the back room. “Gabi said you might be stopping by.”

“Really? I only asked him about where this place was like twenty minutes ago.”

Sombra shrugged. “For a man getting close to fifty, he texts more than a teenage girl.”

“Speaking of teenage girls, could I get a mocha? I love the strength of your coffee, but I need a lil’ sugar with it.”

“Sure thing. Anything to eat?”

Jesse lay his stuff down on a table that looked big enough, and walked up to look through the pastry case. “Oooh, lemon bars.”

“A little sour with your sweet, I like it.” Sombra put a lemon bar on a plate for him, then going back to finish steaming the milk for Jesse’s mocha. “And here you go.”

Jesse paid, then brought everything back to his table. He plugged his computer in and pulled out his stack of essays. The only way through was to start, but it was so hard to get going. He ate his lemon bar slowly as he fucked around on his computer, deciding that it was important to his state of mind during grading that he looked up movie reviews first.

After finishing his bar and putting off the work as long as possible, Jesse got into the essays. There was a groove to it - you learned to stop seeing the correct words, and the wrong ones would jump out at you. He finished with the essays and moved on to the tests, barely noticing as Sombra replaced his empty mocha with a fresh one.

Jesse sat up and stretched his arms towards the ceiling, listening to the pops from his shoulders. Getting old sucked. He was done with all the grading, now he just had to input it into their horrible system, something he could save for planning on Monday. He walked over to the counter where Sombra was sitting, and set his empty cup down.

“I think I owe you for another mocha?” Jesse frowned. “Right? I swore I drank more than one.”

Sombra waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. It was one I made accidentally without soy for someone, it would have gone to waste. Here, have a seat. How is your year going at the school?”

Jesse sat, and ended up talking to Sombra for hours. She had a wicked sense of humor, and made Jesse laugh more than he had in a long while. It turned out that the cafe was just a hobby for her, she made her real money in “programming”, which Jesse quickly understood to mean hacking. As her targets seemed to be governments and not regular schmucks, he gave her a pass.

“God you’re as good as a bartender,” Jesse finally said with a grin.

Sombra looked around the room exaggeratedly, before pulling a bottle of tequila out and putting a finger to her lips. “Shhh, our secret, yes?”

She poured them both cups of coffee, put in a healthy slug of tequila and a dash of coffee liquor. She haphazardly added things from the coffee bar (Jesse saw cinnamon and...nutmeg? maybe?) before she threw some whipped cream on top and pushed it over to him.

Jesse looked at the drink in surprise after taking a sip. “This is fantastic. And...weirdly familiar, like maybe I had it when I was younger.”

Sombra shrugged. “My parents drank something like this all the time, maybe yours did too.”

Jesse wiped foam from where it caught in the hair under his lower lip. “It’s...this is nice. Thanks for getting me out of my head, it’s that point in the year where I know I have to actively not drag school home with me every day, else I never leave, never get a break.”

Sombra smiled. “You know, Gabi is the same way. You two should check on each other, try and hold each other up at school.”

Jesse swirled the dregs of his coffee around the bottom of the cup. “I think we do? Sort of. Reyes is a hard guy to read. I think we’re friends, though.”

Sombra sighed. “He’s been like that for as long as I’ve known him. Don’t let his gruffness push you away, he is nothing but soft candy underneath.”

“Now I don’t know about that,” Jesse smiled a bit. He glanced at his phone, “Dang, I was here way way later than intended. Sorry for keeping you from anything.”

“No, no! You were delightful company. I don’t get many people in the shop, this time of year and this time of week. You are always welcome. In fact, may we trade phone numbers?”

Jesse input his number into her phone - he didn’t recognize the brand nor half of the apps on it and he decided he was happier not knowing - and received a smiley-filled message a minute later.

“Oh no, are you one of those late night ridiculous picture texters?”

Sombra gave a catlike smile. “I suppose you’ll find out.”

After saying their goodbyes, Jesse got home some time later. He felt a vibration in his pocket and opened his phone to find a picture from Sombra: the tequila bottle at a noticeably lower level than when he had left, and the caption ‘managed to continue the party without you, vaquero’. Jesse shook his head, smiling. If nothing else, he had a new friend. Now to find a well-deserved bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> plz note: there are a lot of día de los muertos traditions that vary widely. I'm like jesse here: I can only teach what I know. I live in my city's latinx/hispanic center, so this is tied to basically my localized experience growing up


	6. Chapter 6

It was the Friday after Thanksgiving break, and Jesse was sitting on the table holding Reyes’s laptop in the gym, swinging his legs back and forth like a child.

“If you break my table or laptop, you’re paying for it,” said Reyes, having finished helping Dean correct his pushup form. 

“I know I could lose a few pounds, but I’m not that heavy,” said Jesse. 

Reyes gave him a slow look up and down that made Jesse hope his face wasn’t as pink as it felt. “You look okay,” he finally said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, and how long it took you to give it.”

“Gabe! Jesse!” Out of nowhere, Genji came jogging up to them.

“Are you okay? Jesse asked in concern. “Your face is kind of red there.”

“Do you know how far away you are from the rest of the school? It’s like going to another state!” 

Jesse and Reyes looked at each other and shrugged. Life as usual, in the world of specials.

“What’s going on, Shimada? Or did you just finally take my advice and start to get into shape?” asked Reyes.

“I am perfectly in shape, thank you,” Genji said primly.

“No, you’re skinny. Not in shape. You’re a collection of noodles in two hundred dollar pants.”

Jesse hid a grin behind a hand that only got stronger as Genji turned his glare from Reyes to Jesse. “Stop it, the both of you. You’re as bad as each other.”

Genji cleared his throat. “I was hoping I could get some help from you two. As friends. As...moral support. Tonight”

Jesse shrugged. “I’m a pretty good wingman but I bet you Reyes’s mug will scare anyone off.”

Genji shook his head as Reyes elbowed Jesse in the ribs. “Not what I mean. I’m serious.” The other men quieted down.

“My...brother is in town. We have been - been estranged for some time now, and though he meant to come visit during Thanksgiving, his schedule meant he couldn’t come until now.” Genji seemed to deflate. “I haven’t seen him in person for over ten years and we are getting dinner tonight and I was hoping you two could meet us for tea afterwards. Show him that…” Genji looked down. “That I’ve been successful here. And have friends. That kind of thing.”

Jesse found himself catching Genji in a one-armed hug before he knew it. “You are successful. And kind an’ a good teacher an’ a good dresser and all of that shit. We will make you seem like the king of OHS if that’s what you need.”

Reyes put a hand on Genji’s shoulder. “We’ve all had to deal with this kind of thing. We’re here for you, okay?”

Genji pulled away for a moment, surreptitiously blinking his eyes. “Thank you, thank you both. I really, truly appreciate this. It will be at 9 pm tonight at the crêpe place, you remember it, Jesse?” He nodded.

Glancing at the wall, Genji startled, “Oh, I have to go, I promised Morrison to drop off some forms before I left. Thank you both so much again!” He called the last over his shoulder as he scurried away.

“Did you know he had a brother? Because I didn’t,” Jesse said. 

Gabe shook his head. “We’ve talked family before, both of our sets of parents are dead and he knows I have a sister, but he didn’t mention any siblings.”

Jesse thought, “Ten years. Must have been some fight they had to keep away from each other for that long.”

“Or just distance. I know Genji lived in Japan when he was a kid, maybe big brother stayed there.” 

“Hmm. Maybe. I get the feeling that his brother doesn’t see him as...adult? Legitimate? You know?”

“Yeah. Whatever, we’re his backup for the night.” Reyes gave a not very nice smile. “I don’t have a problem beating up some uppity guy who thinks he can insult our Genji.”

“Remind me not to make you mad, in the future,” Jesse said. “And Reyes - saying this with the utmost of respect and delicacy - you might want to change before tonight.”

Reyes looked down at his black track pants, hoodie with the sleeves ripped off, and bleach-stained black t-shirt underneath. “What, you think this isn’t what Genji would want me to wear?”

“You know what I mean. This is about him, not us. I’m leavin’ my boots at home, too.”

“Yeah yeah, don’t worry. I’ll find a color to wear.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse had showered, cleaned up his goatee, and gone through three outfits before texting Sombra and asking her opinion. She promptly texted back, said that he and Reyes were both being teenage girls and to stop bothering her. He finally went with a dark green button down and dark jeans, figuring it was neutral but non-cowboy enough to satisfy Genji. Plus Genji liked green, so.

It was dumb, but Jesse felt honored enough that Genji would trust him with this that he didn’t want to mess it up. Jesse didn’t have any family left to impress, but he could imagine how hard it could be to see someone after a decade, and how much he would want things to be perfect.

Jesse got to the crêpe place a few minutes early, to find Reyes already there, ordering a coffee. 

“So Sombra said we were both dumb and needed to stop acting like our students,” said Reyes, turning to Jesse. He was wearing dark pants and a red shirt under a grey, zip-up… “Is that goddamn dressy hoodie?” asked Jesse in disbelief. It had some kind of fancy neckline.

“It has cashmere in it,” Reyes said calmly. “Genji gave it to me a few years back, believe it or not.”

“Ugh,” Jesse said. “Oh wait, I think that’s them.” Over in the corner he could see Genji and a broad man with his back to them. All he could tell in the dim light was that he had dark hair in an undercut, with the lights glinting off of earrings.

As they walked over, Genji saw them, and waved with a smile on his face. “Gabe! Jesse! This is my brother…”

The man turned around, and the bottom dropped out of Jesse’s world.

“Hanzo,” he whispered.

“Jesse,” Hanzo said in his infuriatingly calm way, slightly widened eyes the only indication of any surprise. He looked good, frustratingly good, with a bridge piercing that was new to Jesse and virtually no other indication that three years had passed.

Reyes had taken a step back and was looking from one man to the other with narrowed eyes. Genji just looked confused. “Do...do you two kno-”

He stopped as Hanzo strode forward and took Jesse’s face in his hands, kissing him slowly and thoroughly. Jesse melted into it for a moment, the familiar lips cradling him like a long-thought-lost shirt. He blinked his eyes open as he came back to himself, and shoved Hanzo away, making the other man stumble back.

“You lost your right to do that years ago,” he hissed. “How. Dare. You.”

Hanzo crossed his arms as he looked at Jesse. “You know I always wanted you with me, Jesse.”

“No, you wanted me to trail behind you like a dog while you did...whatever it was you did. Not anything with your  _ family _ , obviously. Or did you abandon him like you did me?” Jesse said cruelly.

Hanzo’s eyes narrowed. “You know nothing -” 

Reyes stepped between the men. “Okay, gentlemen. Let’s cool this off a bit. Hanzo, nice to meet you, I’m Gabe and it sounds like you need to have a conversation with your brother. Jesse, let’s find something to drink.” Reyes grabbed Jesse’s arm and bodily hauled him to the other side of the cafe, depositing him in the corner of a couch. 

“Stay. There.” 

Jesse lay where he was put, staring at the ceiling. How did this night go so wrong? He had goddamn dressed up for this! As the furious thoughts percolated in his brain, Reyes sat down next to him and shoved a mug in his hand.

“Drink.”

It was strong coffee with too much sugar. Jesse took too large of a gulp and spent a minute choking before draining the remainder of the cup.

“So. Tell me,” Reyes said quietly but firmly.

Jesse let his head fall back and stare at the ceiling. “Bourbon.”

“What.”

“Muddle a sugar cube with a spoonful of water and bitters. Add bourbon and ice. Garnish with orange twist.”

“That’s not an explanation, that’s an old fashioned.”

Jesse rolled his head over to look at Reyes. “Well I’m sure as hell not explaining this sober, so get me a real drink if you want to hear it.” He rolled his head back to glare at the ceiling.

Reyes plucked the mug from his hands and pointed an emphatic finger. “Keep staying there. I’ll be back.”

Jesse watched out of his peripheral vision as Reyes pulled Genji aside and spoke to him, gesturing back at Jesse several times. Reyes gave Genji a half-hug, and walked back to Jesse, who quickly directed his eyes back to the ceiling. 

Reyes stood over him. “Get up. We’re going next door.” Before he could protest, Reyes grabbed Jesse’s arm and pulled him up. He guided Jesse to the door, an arm around his shoulders but the fingers digging in showing his displeasure.

Once out of the crêpe shop, Reyes turned them to the left. One door down was a innocuous looking place, small neon sign saying “BAR” in a window the only indication of what it was. There were steps leading down to a door, Reyes went down first and Jesse followed.

Inside was a homey, dimly lit bar. Booths lined the room with tables in the middle, a long wooden bar taking up the other side of the room. Reyes led them to seats at the bar near the back. He nodded to the bartender, who greeted him by name. “Old fashioned and the usual,” he said.

They sat in silence until their drinks arrived. Jesse’s had a maraschino cherry, which he appreciated, and Reyes was drinking something that smelled like a tire fire and so was probably very good scotch. As Jesse crunched up his cherry, Reyes said. “So.”

Jesse sighed and took a sip of his drink. “Remember way back when, and you asked me why I left New Mexico for here?”

“Lemme guess. That back there was the breakup.”

“Yep.” Jesse took another sip, and twirled the cherry stem between his fingers. “We met at work. Before I was a teacher, I mean. I was with the NPS, and he was high up in the army, can’t remember details because there were shifts and promotions, but he was an officer pretty up there in rank. He was workin’ at the White Sands Missile Range when a drugs case I was involved in came over there. We connected. It was good, for awhile.”

Jesse raised a hand to the bartender and was soon munching through the cherry of a fresh drink. “Then I went back to Carlsbad and they moved him to Fort Bliss. And it was still good. I… I was starting to burn out. I had some serious cases, ended up seeing a lot of fighting, even got kidnapped by this dumbass gang, the Deadlocks.” 

Jesse gnawed on a piece of ice for a minute. “Hanzo...didn’t get it. God, I can’t believe they’re part of the same family, him and Genji are night and day. Did you know their family is yakuza, back in Japan? Hanzo has this giantass tattoo going all the way down his arm from his chest. Wonder if Genji has one too.”

“He doesn’t, unless it was on the part of his arms that got replaced. Saw him shirtless at a pool party a few years back,” Reyes said quietly.

Jesse had a fresh drink. Reyes grabbed the cherry away from him before he could get it. Frowning in mock-outrage, Jesse took a sip. “Anyways. Hanzo is. Is always in control. He can sublimate any emotion he wants. He’s the calmest person in the world. I think it was beat out of him as a kid. It’s not his fault, it’s not...not in and of itself a bad thing. I feel… felt bad for him most of the time, that part of him. Which is why we probably stayed together for as long as we did. Longer than we should have.”

Jesse paused for a minute, poking at the melting ice with his straw. He was finally hitting that nice warm feeling of tipsiness. “Everythin’s so straightforward with him. Black and white, right and wrong. It was honorable or it wasn’t worth talking about. I dunno what, who made him like that. It’s like...a worldview that works until it doesn’t and you realize that it, that  _ they _ are broken. After the last thing with the Deadlocks, I was just so tired. I wanted out. I powered through my masters in a year an’ a half while I took a more home-based, less action-y position at the Caverns. Less LEO stuff, more traditional ranger stuff. I think they let me because they felt bad ‘cause of the kidnappin’ an’ shit.”

Jesse asked for another drink. Reyes, still on his first, raised an eyebrow. “Might want to slow down there, cowboy.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I was properly drunk, Gabriel Reyes? Years. I...dream when I drink too much, so I don’t do it a lot. I think I’ll be okay this time, though. You’ll take care of me, right, Gabriel?” Jesse’s head was propped on his hand, looking at Reyes through heavy lidded eyes and catching his straw between his teeth. “You’ll give me sweet dreams.”

Reyes let out a noise that was almost a laugh, something Jesse couldn’t name in his voice. “You are well on your way to being drunk there, friend.”

“Mmmhmm. It’ll only get better from here, darlin’. So there I was, teachin’ certificate in hand, and I go and get a job in this suburban district down the highway. I’m havin’ a blast. Teachin’ the kids Spanish, coachin’ on the side, start up this shootin’ club. I even get Han involved, he’s teachin’ ‘em archery. An’ then he sees how I’m doin’, that I’m happy an’ making friends and he sees the kids. You know the kids, they all got tough lives. An’ I was over in Mescalero, near the Apache rez, so you’ve got all these kids with the shittiest hand possible dealt to them.”

Jesse grabbed another drink before Reyes could stop him. 

“That’s six. No more, Carlo,” said Reyes to the bartender.

“You got his keys?” Before Jesse could react - which granted, wasn’t hard to do right now - Reyes had pulled his keychain from his back pocket. “Yeah.”

“If this was all it took to get you in my pants, I’d’ve drank a lot sooner,” murmured Jesse. Reyes rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, Han just couldn’t get why I was trying so hard. He would just talk about how they were part of their ‘family circumstance’ or whatever, and how I only had ‘em for one subject and a lil’ after school an’ it wouldn’t make a difference. How I should go back to the LEO shit, ‘cause there I was really doin’ good. He just...he didn’t get it. It was math to him, and my kids came up losin’ in his equations so it was time to cut bait.”

Jesse sighed. “That’s when the good just stopped bein’ there. He was bein’ promoted and shuffled around, an’ this opportunity came for him to do some major thing back in Japan, somethin’ that would last a while. Like over a year. An’ he just expected me to come with. To abandon everythin’ I’d worked for and go with ‘im. At this point I’d moved from the suburban to the city district, and I was really settlin’ in, findin’ my niche. ‘n he just expected me to...leave.”

“An’ so I just came home one day, and movers were takin’ all his stuff out. He wasn’t even there.” Jesse spoke carefully, aware of his drunkenness and that he could start slurring any minute. “He stopped by the school the next day, they pulled me out in the middle of class. He shook my hand and said that perhaps I would come to my senses and left me there to finish teaching Spanish II. Years of my life, and I got a handshake and movers and tenth graders wondering what the fuck happened to me during that five minutes.”

“An’ that’s the whole sad story.”

They sat in silence for a minute. “I’ll be right back,” Reyes said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Y’have my keys. ‘M not goin’ anywhere.”

Reyes went through a hallway that presumably led to the bathroom. Finding his glass empty and the bartender unwilling to give him anything but water, Jesse stole Reyes’s glass and downed the half-drink that he’d been nursing for an hour. Jesse was glad he couldn’t really feel his tongue because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have enjoyed the drink. He wasn’t a big scotch fan.

“Really?” Reyes sighed on returning. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

“Don’ leave me alone,” muttered Jesse. “Don’ be like him.”

A warm hand on his back. “I’m not going anywhere, McCree.” 

“ ‘M sorry for bein’ weak. ‘M really sorry for doing that to Genji, did you tell him I was sorry? Because he hadn’t seen him in so long and there I was ruinin’ it. If I wasn’t there his night would have been great.” Jesse’s head was in his hands.

“No, no, McCree, none of this is your fault. Even if you weren’t there, I don’t think I would have gotten along with him well. Hell, I don’t know how Genji would have gotten along with him, if he acted the way he did towards you.” Reyes’s thumb was tracing warm circles on the knob at the top of Jesse’s spine.

“I told Genji that I was going to talk to you about whatever the issue was between the two of you, and that he should do the same with his brother. I won’t tell Genji, though, if you don’t want me to.”

“No, no, I gotta tell ‘im, owe ‘im that. I should tell him,” Jesse fumbled his phone out, and squintingly started trying to find his message app. “Hey!” he said, as Reyes plucked the phone from his hands.

“The absolute last thing you should be doing right now is texting. We need to get you home and into bed.”

Reyes turned towards Carlo, the bartender. “Hey, I’m gonna pull his car around. Watch him for me for a few?” The man nodded.

A minute after Reyes left, Jesse lifted his head, looking around. “I think he left,” he told the bartender seriously. “He’s not comin’ back.”

“I’ve known Reyes a long time, son. He doesn’t bring people here unless he really cares about them. Which right now is all of you and that purple haired girl. So sober up and appreciate that he’s taking care of you.” Carlo pushed a glass of water over. “You should probably drink that.”

Reyes came back, standing in front of Jesse. “Can you walk? Please tell me you can walk.”

“I can walk,” Jesse said, and took a step to prove it. The next step was a little wobbly, however, and Reyes got a shoulder under Jesse’s arm to steady him as they slowly made their way to the entrance. 

“You’re lucky that I have a sport bike I can stick in the back,” said Jesse, gesturing to the little vehicle that was in the bed of Jesse’s truck. “Otherwise I’d take your truck home after dropping you off and you’d be stuck.”

“Where’d that come from?” asked Jesse wonderingly. 

“I live right there,” Reyes waved a hand to a set of townhouses a few doors down.

“Why aren’t you takin’ me home then? It’s closer.” 

“No, you need water and your own bed. I’m too damn old to deal with drunks overnight.”

“Yer not old. Yer pretty. Pretty pretty Gabi with his pretty pretty eyes who should take me home with him.” Jesse was pretty sure that his thoughts were staying in his head and not coming out of his mouth. Pretty sure. Pretty like Reyes.

Reyes rolled his eyes as he pulled out onto the main road. “Uh huh. Sure.”

Jesse stayed quiet for most of the ride, fascinated by the streetlights as they went by and turned into flickering streaks of light.

He looked around as they came to a stop. “Oh, this is familiar!”

“I certainly hope so. You live here, McCree.”

“Thaaaaat’s right. I do.”

Reyes pulled Jesse out of his side of the truck, slinging his arm back over his shoulders. They made their way to the house, where Jesse unhelpfully couldn’t remember which of his dozen keys actually opened the door. 

They eventually succeeded, and Reyes got them inside, to an indoor patio. “Where to, McCree?” At McCree’s point up the stairs, he sighed, “Of course.”

Stumbling their way upstairs, they had another adventure with keys at the top, before finally getting inside. “Where’s your kitchen McCree?”

Jesse was finding the wall so very soft. Did his landlords pad it while he was out?

“McCree. Jesse. Where is your kitchen.” Jesse used the wall as a support as he made his way to his kitchen. Reyes sat him in a seat and wouldn’t let him move until he’d downed a glass of water.

“Do you have any - oh hell, I’ll just find them myself.” Reyes wandered off, and Jesse put his head down. Reyes took such good care of him, he was such a nice man.

“Come on, up and at ‘em. If you don’t take these you’ll hate yourself in the morning.” Reyes pulled Jesse upright, and made him down several painkillers with another glass of water. “Let’s pack you in for the night.”

Reyes helped Jesse to his bedroom. As he pulled off Jesse’s boots, Jesse thought vaguely that he was glad he’d cleaned the place the other day. Bed was a mess, but oh well. 

“I don’t care about the state of your bed, Jesse.”

Was he talking out loud? Jesse thought he was thinking.

“Oh, no, you’re definitely saying everything that comes into your head right now. Come on, pants off unless you want to sleep in tight jeans.”

Jesse had thought about this, about Reyes taking his pants off. Usually there was more fun stuff beforehand, though. They hadn’t done fun stuff, had they?

“Oh god. Please stop talking.”

Jesse tried to take his shirt off, but the buttons were just so tiny. Reyes finally pushed away his fingers and did it himself. “Get in bed, Jesse.”

Jesse got in, and flopped around confusedly for a minute while Reyes vanished. He reappeared with a glass of water and more painkillers, that he put on the nightstand next to the bed. 

“Take these in the morning. I’ll text to make sure you’re alive, okay?”

Jesse frantically grabbed Reyes’s hand. “Don’ leave me. ‘M gonna dream about the Deadlocks an’ the caves an’ th’...just don’ leave me.” Reyes looked into Jesse’s damp eyes for a long minute. 

“I’ll wait until you fall asleep, okay?”

“Mmkay.”

Reyes turned out the bedroom lights, leaving the hallway light on to let some illumination in around the side of the door. Jesse moved to the far side of the bed, Reyes sitting next to him with his back propped up against the wall and legs stretched out. 

“Than’ you,” Jesse said, voice muffled with alcohol and impending sleep. He fumbled a hand until it patted Reyes’s thigh. His breathing deepened as he flirted with the edges of sleep.

“You should be thanking me for my self control, is what you should be doing,” murmured Reyes to himself. His hand combed through Jesse’s hair, who squirmed like a cat being petted until he was curled against Reyes’s leg.

“I should get an award. There should be a special place in heaven,” Reyes continued conversationally to himself. “You can’t look like you do and act like you do and expect a man to keep his composure.”

Jesse was so close to sleep. He felt the bed move as Reyes got up. “Only good thing is I bet you don’t remember much of this tomorrow,” he heard a quiet voice say. That lovely hand left his hair and Jesse felt a soft pressure on his temple before he felt Reyes move away and the door shut. He sleepily listened to the hall door shut, sounds on the stairs, two more doors shut, and then the revving of what sounded like a small motorcycle. Silence finally fell, and Jesse slipped fully into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry Hanzo bb but I needed a villain with emotional investment ilu <3


	7. Chapter 7

Pounding.

Was that someone at the door?

Jesse opened an eye and closed it quickly when he realized it was only the inside of his head. Everything hurt. He must have been drinking. He had a drink or two every once in awhile, but as a rule Jesse didn’t get drunk. Too many memories lay that way. He was...cracking an eye open...at home?

He reached out and felt for his phone. Jesse knocked it to the floor, but did managed to grab a bottle, which revealed itself to his squinted eyes to be painkillers. He downed several of them with the glass of water next to it. Did someone leave that for him? If his...everything hurt this much, he couldn’t imagine having done it for himself.

Reaching down and swallowing hard against his stomach, Jesse grabbed his phone. Two messages, one from Reyes and one from Sombra. He opened the one from Reyes first. 

Gabriel Reyes (10:21 am): Are you alive? 

Jesse McCree (12:43 pm): no

Gabriel Reyes (12:44 pm): Didn’t know corpses could text. Take some advil, drink some water.

Jesse McCree (12:45 pm): did you leave that for me? i don’t remember much past like drink 2

Gabriel Reyes (12:45 pm): You told me your whole Hanzo history, and I had to pour you into bed. Please don’t do that again, my back hurts from holding you up.

Jesse McCree (12:46 pm): im sorry. im a gross drunk. why i don’t do it much

Gabriel Reyes (12:47 pm): You weren’t that bad. I’d talk to Genji sooner rather than later though.

Jesse McCree (12:48 pm): soon as i wont puke on him i will

\----

Sombra (10:30 am): text Gabi you dork. he is worried about you and he keeps whining to me

Jesse McCree (12:50 pm): i did. pretty sure i made a fool of myself last night

Sombra (12:54 pm): oh don’t worry, you did. but the word “adorable” was used more than I am comfortable with so you must be one of those nice drunk boys

Jesse McCree (12:55 pm): what. i am confused. and or too hungover for this

Sombra (12:56 pm): oye cabrón estoy cansado de esta mierdaaaaa you two need to talk your crap out

Jesse McCree (12:56 pm): Sombra what does that mean what shit  


Jesse McCree (1:01 pm): Sombra

Jesse McCree (1:12 pm): Sombra you jerk

\---

Jesse McCree (1:00 pm): hey man, are you up?

Genji Shimada (1:01 pm): Given that is is past 1 pm, yes

Jesse McCree (1:02 pm): you had lunch yet? can I buy you some and explain myself? i feel like the biggest of asses

Genji Shimada (1:10 pm): All right. The diner on Lincoln?

Jesse McCree (1:10 pm): yeah yeah I’ll be there in like 20 

\---

Jesse had his hood (maybe it was the hoodie he still hadn’t given back to Reyes but no one needed to know that) pulled up and sunglasses on, trying to block out the sun. The diner was empty but for Genji, sitting in a corner booth and looking down into a cup of coffee.

Jesse sat down, pulling off his sunglasses as he did. “You look about as good as I feel right now.”

Genji gave a faint smile. “And I had about as enjoyable a talk last night as you did, presumably.”

They sat in silence, until a waitress came over with coffee and water for Jesse. They both ordered eggs and pancakes, then lapsed back into quiet.

“So. Um. What did he tell you?”

Genji dumped a packet of sugar into his freshened coffee. “He told me that you two had met in New Mexico, while he was with the army and you were with the Park Service. He said you were together for several years. He said that he was offered an overseas position, and you declined to go with him.”

Jesse drank half his cup, not sure of what he should say. “Yeah. That’s...the bare bones of it, I guess. It was a lot messier to live through.”

Genji sighed. “That is how Hanzo is. He has a story structure, a plot that he follows, and the rest of us just get scattered around it. I told you that we had not been in contact for about a decade?”

Jesse nodded. 

“Our family was...well. I’m sure Hanzo told you some about it. He was expected to follow in the family business, which he did. I was less serious. I spent much of our teenage years pushing the boundaries of our family, trying to see how far I could go within their antiquated restrictions. Hanzo and I eventually had a big fight. We both said brutal things, we both said true things. It ended with me storming out of our house, right into a car I didn’t see coming. Hence,” he waved his metallic arms in the air.

“As soon as I healed, I moved to America. Went to college, got my teaching degree, and have been here ever since. I didn’t talk to any of my family all that time. Apparently Hanzo decided to leave the family shortly after I did and also go to America, though on the opposite side of the country. He joined the military, and then you know more about what happened to him than I did. Our family back in Hanamura has apparently been broken from infighting and such. I don’t particularly care to see any of them again, so,” he shrugged.

“How…” Genji poked at an egg, breaking the yolk to stream out over the plate. “How was he? When you knew him?”

“Very rigid. Binary. Few shades of grey. It’s why we didn’t work out. I started teachin', where everything is...flexible. A kid loves you one day, hates you the next. Your state standards change on you overnight. Your clubs and teams form and dissolve. Your students move or go to jail or run away. He didn’t understand at all why I do what I do, why I love it. That was basically it.”

Genji laughed, a little sadly. “How odd it is, that our world is this small. I hope you don’t think less of me, for...any of this.”

Jesse grabbed Genji’s arm, squeezing the metal the best he could, “No, no! I hope you don’t think less of me for how badly I behaved last night. It got even worse, after, too.”

“Oh?”

“I...hadn’t dealt with our breakup well. Then or now. So I decided I needed some liquid courage to tell Reyes about it. I’ll put it this way, I don’t remember how the evening ended, but I’m pretty sure I was a sad broken-hearted sloppy drunk,” Jesse held his still-throbbing head in his hands. “Still paying for it, too.”

“Did the liquid courage finally give you the balls to make a move on Gabe?” Genji asked calmly, taking a bite of pancake.

Jesse’s elbow slipped off the table, nearly taking him with it. “Wh-what? Why would you say that? No. No? No! What the hell?”

“You two have been dancing around each other from literally our first day. It’s almost the end of the semester, and it’s getting less amusing.”

“We’re just friends!”

Genji tilted his head. “Okay Jesse. Sit there in that sweatshirt and tell me that.”

Jesse felt the flush cover his face. “You and Sombra are seeing things.”

“There you go, then. I’ve met Sombra once, and I’ve been friends with Gabe for years. She’s pretty much his little sister. And you two are all cozy? Okay.”

Jesse pulled his head back, certainly not retreating into the hoodie like a turtle. “We’re friends.”

“Sure, Jesse. Whatever you say.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse’s voice was nearly gone from yelling. “Come on, Dean, get the lead out!” His cross-country team was running in their last meet of the season, they were a just a few weeks away from winter break, and Jesse’s relay team was so goddamn close to winning regionals.

Next to him, Oxton seemed to have springs on her feet as she bounced up and down, yelling support in her cheery British accent. “Go, Dean, go!”

Ten seconds later, Dean Crowley had crossed the finish line and Jesse and Oxton were jumping around hugging each other. “We did it, WE DID IT!” Oxton’s girls had taken first and second in their 5 km race and Jesse had a boy come in third in the 8 km in addition to the relay win they just had, and so they would both be taking their teams to states next week. OHS hadn’t had anyone go past districts in years until Oxton showed up three years ago and seemed to push the team to victory from sheer positivity.

“Oh my god, we have like a week to prepare!” Oxton exclaimed. “The poor sods are going to be going through two feet of snow, I swear.” 

“We’ll get them fleece lined leggings,” Jesse said, face hurting from smiling so much. “Who cares, we’re going to  _ states _ !” They started jumping around again, this time joined by Jesse’s sweaty boys team. 

“I can’t wait to get back and tell everyone!” Oxton checked her watch. “If we get on the bus now, we’ll be back before school’s out. Okay, everyone, get on the bus so we can brag about ourselves!” This last was met with cheers from everyone, including Jesse.

Half an hour later, they all piled out of the bus, running through the snow into the school. Jesse and Oxton followed at a slightly more sedate pace, talking through the next week. 

“Let’s not tire them out totally, I’ll never forget how we went to regionals one year and our coach made us do full practices every night so when we finally got there we were too tired to do anything.” Jesse told her.

“Agreed. Let’s do...Monday, Tuesday, Thursday? We’ll leave Saturday midday, get back Sunday late night.”

“We have to travel out of town? We’re in the city! People come to us!” Jesse exclaimed.

“Yeah, but all the teams from Bumfuck, Wherever have to get there, too. So they always put us somewhere near the center of the state. We’re lucky enough to get a hotel this time, last year we had be housed in random people’s houses.” They both made faces at that.

“Find someone who can chaperone with you. I only have the two girls, but because you have over four they’ll be in two rooms and so you need another adult. Tell Zarya, give her all the student names with emergency contact info, same for you and your other chaperone,” Oxton continued.

“Will do.” They looked at each other for a second before hugging again, “We did it!”

Jesse jogged back to his office. He knew he’d be gone for most of the day so he had his sports bag instead of his messenger bag, but he wanted to grab his laptop before going home. Halfway down his hallway, he saw a familiar figure. “Hey! Reyes!”

Reyes turned around, “You’re back! I just knocked to see if you had gotten in.”

“We did. We won!” Jesse did a dorky little hop in excitement. “We took first in the relay, and JD got third in the 8 km. Oxton’s girls placed in theirs, too, so we’re all going to states!”

Reyes grinned, “That’s fantastic, I know how worried you were about it.”

Jesse smiled back, “Speaking of which, what are you doing next Saturday? Remember how much you love meeee,” he said in a pleading tone, giving what he thought were his best puppy dog eyes.

With a somewhat strangled cough, Reyes asked, “Let me guess, you need a chaperone?”

“Yep. Come on, it’ll be fun! One last hurrah before break.”

“Fun. With JD, Dean, Austin…” he trailed off.

“Alex Burke and Roger. And Brian as alternate.”

“Really? Roger? And you’re calling that lot fun.” Reyes had a half smile. 

“I know, I know. It’s their energy that makes them good runners, though, I swear. Plus they’ll be tired enough they shouldn’t be too much trouble. It’s only one night, pretty please?”

“Fine,” said Reyes. “But you owe me a drink after we put the kids to bed.” He held up a finger. “One drink. No repeats of a few weeks ago.”

Jesse held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor. Thank you so much, Reyes, this’ll be awesome.”

“Tell me that again after the bus ride.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Why did I ever become a teacher. Why did I ever decide to coach a team. Why do I hate myself,” Jesse moaned, head slumped against the bus seat in front of him.

“I tell you these things, and you still don’t listen to me,” rumbled Reyes from the seat in front of him.

“Cheer up, loves! Food is here!” Oxton came bustling onto the bus with bags in hand. 

“At least when they’re eating they won’t be screaming,” moaned Jesse, taking a sandwich. “I don’t get it, they’re all fine in my classes, why are they such a goddamn mess now?”

“They’re teenagers on an overnight trip, and they’re about to run the most important race of their lives thus far. They’re nervous and excited and taking it all out on our ears,” Reyes bit into a burger, squirting ketchup on his jacket. “Damnit.”

Handing over napkins, Jesse turned to Oxton. “How much farther? I want us to get settled in so they can freak out but still get sleep.”

She pulled out her phone. “About an hour? We’ll be in at around 8.”

Jesse morosely chewed. One more hour of screaming. Then it would be quiet.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse pressed the pillow over his face. “Why. Won’t. They. Stop. Yelling.”

“Believe it or not, this is paradise compared to when we take wrestling on trips. Imagine this lot, plus fifteen more. It’s a special kind of hell.”

“So how do you handle it?”

“I threaten to bench them. I do it, too, about once every three or four years with the biggest troublemakers that are still good enough that they could have had a chance. Word spreads that I mean it, and they calm down.”

“Would that work with these guys?”

“Mm. I don’t want to step on your toes -  I know you’re their coach, but if I do it, they might believe it more.”

“Step on me all you want, Reyes. Anything as long as it shuts them up.”

Reyes pulled his hood up and gave Jesse an evil smile before leaving and knocking on the room next door. Jesse couldn’t hear anything, from either Reyes or the boys, but he came back five minutes later with a satisfied look on his face.

“Well, whatever you did made them quiet.”

“I told them that Brian was there for a reason as alternate. And that teams had been known to run four man relays with only three men, if necessary.”

“I...don’t actually know if that’s true.”

“Me neither.” They looked at each other and snickered. 

“They’re in their two rooms, and the girls are in theirs. And it’s only,” Reyes looked at his watch. “Ten. God, I’m too old for this shit.”

“When you have to be at school at 7, ten feels like two used to.”

“Yep. Want me to see if Oxton could keep an eye, we could grab a nightcap?”

“You willin’ to leave them alone?”

“Oxton’s not going anywhere, she’ll be Skyping with her girlfriend back in England.”

They gave the boys another half hour, making sure they were down for the night before they locked up their room, stopping by to talk to Oxton on their way. “Go and have fun, boys. You deserve it,” she smiled at them, something made terrifying by the green clay mask she had on her face.

They made their way down to the first floor, ordering drinks - Jesse decided to stay away for bourbon for awhile so he stuck to a weird strong craft beer while Reyes got fancy with a sazerac. Jesse tried a sip, Reyes snickering at the look on his face. 

“I hate anise, I don’t know what I expected.”

“Drink your hops with a splash of water, kid.”

“Hey, this shit is 12% ABV. I can have a good time with just one.”

“I think you mean because no sane person would drink more than one.”

They walked outside. There was snow on the ground, but the hotel had heat lamps and a firepit going. They sat down on the bench seat in front of the pit, and Jesse stretched his legs out. 

“I feel like I’m still on that bus, and my legs will never relax again.” 

“Four hours is a long time, especially when you’re a passenger.”

They sat, sipping their drinks and staring into the fire in companionable silence. Jesse shifted and brought out a small battered silver case. He pulled out a cigarillo. “You mind?”

“No. Surprised, though. You run more than any sane adult I know, and you smoke?”

Jesse lit up and blew a stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth, away from Reyes. “Bad habits of my youth. At this point in life they only come out when I’m stressed.”

Reyes plucked the cigar from Jesse’s hand and took a drag. Jesse watched his lips wrap around the end. “Don’t worry about it. However they do, you got them here after being here for just a few months. Don’t discount how important that is.”

“Yeah, but that almost makes it worse. This is my first year at this school, with this team. No matter how long I’ll be here, you always remember those kids in your first year, you know? I still can tell you the name of every kid on my team during my first year, half a decade ago.” Taking the cigarillo back, Jesse blew a series of smoke rings, watching them dissipate into the cold winter air.

“You don’t get this if you’re just going to play with it.” Reyes pulled the cigar from Jesse’s loose fingers. “Bruce, Jimmy, Christian, Felicio, Warren. That was my starting wrestling team, twenty years ago.”  

“See? This year is important.”

“I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying that you’re not the one running, so relax because you can’t do anything about it.”

“Fine, o oracle, I’ll let nature take its course. Now give me my cigar back.”

“Not if you’re just going to abuse it.”

Jesse reached over as Reyes held the cigarillo away, and they shoved at each other for a minute. When they stopped Jesse found himself very close to Reyes’s face, left hand on Reyes’s shoulder and right arm across his chest, reaching for the arm holding the cigar away from Jesse.

They looked at each other for stretched out seconds, Jesse watching the reflected flames in Reyes’s eyes. Reyes flicked the cigar out into the snow. It sizzled and went out as he reached forward and cradled Jesse’s face in his hand. Jesse closed his eyes for a moment, relishing the feel of cold air on one cheek and a warm hand large enough to hold his jaw and thread into his hair on the other before he leaned forward.

Their lips met in a gentle kiss, a long moment of quiet accompanied by the sound of crackling wood and soft wind. Jesse pulled back for a moment and rested his forehead against the other man’s. 

“What are we doing, Gabe,” he breathed out.

“We’re letting nature take its course,” murmured Reyes, before tugging Jesse back to him. It was awkward, sitting next to each other on the hard wooden bench and turning at the waist. Jesse would take all the pulled abdominal muscles in the world if he could just keep doing this forever.

Reyes caught Jesse’s lower lip in his teeth, pulling a soft noise from Jesse before he licked his way into Jesse’s mouth. Jesse tilted his head, deepening the kiss and sliding a hand inside Reyes’s open coat. Reyes pulled his mouth away with a soft sucking sound, kissing a line up Jesse’s jawline to his ear. Jesse let his head fall back, making an involuntary noise deep in his chest.

A sudden burst of noise made them twitch apart, a group of people parading out of the hotel with drinks in hand. Jesse put a hand over his face. “God. This is...not the place.”

“No, it’s not,” sighed Reyes. “We should go to bed. To sleep.”

They got up, making their way back inside. Jesse surreptitiously shifted his pants around. You’d think he was the age of his students, not twenty years older, from his reaction. Lord.

They took the elevator up, consciously standing farther apart than they would normally. The students’ rooms were all thankfully quiet. As they got in the room, Jesse sat on the edge of his bed. “I’m going to text Oxton, let her know we’re in for the night.”

“Sure,” Reyes said, grabbing some clothing and his toiletry bag and going into the bathroom. Jesse heard the shower start up, and he let himself fall back on the bed and press the heels of his hands into his eyes. This was what he wanted. It was. It was just...so emphatically not the place, Jesus. It was hard to think of a worse place than having a half dozen teenagers on the other side of a thin wall ten feet away.  

Jesse covered his eyes with an arm, blocking out the light. He was just going to lay here and think for a minute…

He woke to his arm being moved away from his eyes. Jesse looked up to see Reyes’s fond eyes looking down at him. “If you want a shower, I’m out.” Jesse blinked as a drop of water fell onto him from Reyes’s hair. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m up.” Jesse grabbed his things from his duffle, yawning as he went. He needed to rinse the grime of the bus off of him, get nice and clean before sleep. 

The shower was warm already from Reyes’ shower, and Jesse started in on the journey that was detangling his hair. Unfortunately this let his mind run wild. Let him think about how Reyes was in here just minutes ago. Naked. Jesse consciously finished detangling and shampooing his hair before glancing down to confirm that his body really liked the idea of Reyes naked. He soaped up, and if Jesse used that soapy hand to do something very quietly school-inappropriate, then no one was the wiser. He made sure to wash all evidence away - it would just be his luck for Reyes to find out - before rinsing the conditioner out of his hair and stepping out. 

He dried off and dressed in faded flannel pants and an old half-marathon shirt. Jesse brushed his teeth sleepily before walking back out into the room. Reyes was already in his bed, looking at his phone with a half-asleep expression on his face. “When are you getting up?”

Jesse pulled out his own phone, bringing up their schedule tomorrow. “The girls are first, but we’re all going to eat together. Let’s say...seven? That’ll give us time to get the kids up.”

“Sounds good. Night, McCree.”

“Night.”

Jesse turned off his light, and fell asleep to the sound of the hotel air conditioner.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Once more, Jesse found himself losing his voice. It was the final leg of the relay. Jesse had switched Dean and Roger’s legs at the last minute - Dean’s left calf had been tight all day, and Jesse knew that Roger could make up the time during the last leg. Lena had one of her girls place third, and JD didn’t medal but had come in at a respectable fifth. Jesse hadn’t felt so keyed up since he had been under actual gunfire, in his park service days.

He clutched at Reyes’s arm as small figures came into the foggy distance. As they got closer, Jesse could see Roger’s long legs eating up the ground, near the front of the pack. The group was so tight Jesse couldn’t see who was in what place, and so held back a bit on his cheering as they all crossed the finish line. The crowd was quiet, no one knowing who won, until the announcers listed the places. Overwatch High School had come in second. 

Jesse rushed forward with the rest of the team to envelop Roger in a giant hug ball. The kids’ legs were trembling with exertion, but they tried their best to jump up and down. After they were celebrated out, the adults herded them back to the hotel - Jesse made all of them shower, claiming that he couldn’t deal with five hours of their race sweat. He almost felt like a shower himself, adrenaline giving his own sweat a bitter tang, but instead used the time to pack up his stuff and check in on the kids. 

The bus ride back was far different from the one going there. Despite - or perhaps because of - all the excitement, the kids were all exhausted and the adults weren’t much better. At a rest stop two hours from home, Jesse got back on the bus after stretching his legs. He dropped down into the seat next to Reyes, who had dozed most of the way down while ensconced in one hoodie and using another as a pillow.

“You’re not goin’ to be able to sleep tonight, you know.” Jesse said, poking at Reyes’s side.

“Eh. I never sleep well when I’m away from home so I’m considering it making up for lost time.”

Jesse looked back to see all the students either asleep or on their phones.

“At least it’s quiet enough for some sleep.”

“Mmm.” Reyes appeared to go right back to dozing, and after settling himself in his seat, Jesse leaned back and closed his eyes. 

Jesse was woken by someone shaking his shoulder. The bus was stopped and Oxton was in front of him. “I’m going to get the kids up. I’d maybe think about moving if I were you.” 

Jesse blinked in confusion, still warm and sleepy. He moved to sit up only to realize he had somehow been tucked under Reyes’s arm, nestled against his chest with the other man’s head tilted against his. He eased his way out, gently setting the arm down on Reyes’s lap before shaking his shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead. We’re home.”

Reyes’s eyes fluttered open, finding Jesse’s face and smiling in a way that made something twist low in Jesse’s chest. Reyes looked around and seemed to realize where they were, his face closing off a little. Oxton’s voice came from the back: “Okay, friends, look around you and make sure you have everything. If you haven’t called your family already, do it now, we don’t want to wait around all night.”

They trooped out of the bus, most students going straight to the line of waiting cars. Oxton left after her last girl was picked up, waving tiredly in farewell. Reyes and Jesse waited with Austin for the extra few minutes until his dad showed up, both men smiling at how he nearly broke the car window by tapping his medal against it.

The two men walked back to the parking lot. Jesse’s truck was first, and he stopped and looked at Reyes. 

“Um. So.” Jesse could not think of a single word to continue. 

Reyes stepped forward, crowding Jesse back against the door of his truck. He took Jesse’s face in his hands and gave him a single, slow kiss, before turning and walking to his van - the motorcycle having been stowed for the season. 

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk later.” The van pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Jesse standing by his truck in the cold. 

“What the actual fuck does that mean.” Jesse said to himself in disbelief. Standing there, his phone buzzed. He opened it to find a picture message from Oxton. It was him and Reyes curled around each other on the bus, asleep. Fuck, they looked good together. Oxton’s message read, “i’ll delete it but figured you’d want a copy xoxo”. 

As soon as he could, he was going to corner Reyes and they were going to goddamn talk.


	8. Chapter 8

They did not, in fact, talk. 

The last week and a half of school before winter break flew by in a blur. Midterms, field trips, and the odd state test took up everyone’s time. Jesse didn’t have a planning period for four days straight, having to cover classes for various colleagues. Two of the last three days of school Jesse himself had to call out, having been hit with bronchitis that wouldn’t let him walk more than two steps without coughing hard enough to see stars. He made it in for the very last day, only to find half his students not there and half the teachers out with the same illness.

Jesse took a flight back to New Mexico, the day before Christmas Eve. Although his parents had passed some years ago, he had an auntie and some cousins in the area who had adopted him for holidays years before. It was good to not cook for himself, his only duties to wrap presents, drink cinnamon-laced cocoa, and give piggyback rides to his various small relatives. He flew back on the 27th - determined to give himself a vacation of sitting around on his ass for a few days before having to think about the coming semester.

The weather was surprisingly mild, cold but with only a few inches of snow on the ground. Jesse made a point to wrap himself up and go for a run every day - it was silent out, the thin layer of snow muffling the few sounds around. The day before New Year’s Eve, Jesse found himself at Sombra’s cafe, having run a circuitous route that accidentally led him there.

He pushed open the door, entering in a cloud of tiny snowflakes and tinkling bells above the door. Sombra looked up from the middle of setting out pastries in the case, her face spreading in a wide smile. “Jessito! Come in, I haven’t seen you in a minute!”

Jesse grinned and unwrapped his scarf from his neck and walked over. “ ‘S the nature of the holidays, Sombra, we all scatter to the winds and leave this town empty.”

Sombra sighed, “You are telling me. You’re my third customer of the day, and I’ve been open since seven. Come, sit with me.”

“Yeah, but I’m worth like, ten customers,” Jesse said, pulling out a chair.

“You certainly eat enough for ten,  _ mijo _ . You want a mocha?”

“Please and thank you.”

Jesse let the comforting sounds of clinking spoons and steam wash over him as he relaxed into the counter stool. “You do anything special for Christmas?”

“Not really. My brother and our cousins live over in New York, they came over and stayed for a few days, had dinner with me and Gabi. Just low key, we’re all old enough that we don’t really do presents or such anymore.”

“Lucky you, I went back home to see my tía and cousins. Do you know how goddamned expensive toys are now? Pretty sure I spent the equivalent of my rent on those little monsters.”

As Jesse sipped his mocha and Sombra stocked her case, they talked about their respective families. Sombra’s brother was some sort of accountant - “A legitimate one, I swear!” - that she didn’t see enough. 

“As I get older, it gets harder to keep in touch with everyone,” she said. “I’m afraid of getting old and everyone will be gone, then the winters will truly be cold.”

“You’ll never be alone, you’re just too friendly for that. Plus, you have me, now. How could you ever give this up?” Jesse gestured to himself.

“Ah yes, the sweaty running man dressed in so many layers he is more marshmallow than man. Wrong gender aside, you are lovely but not the most attractive right now, I am sorry.”

“Hey now, hat head is the on-trend thing right now.”

“At least you have healthy self esteem.”

“If no one else finds me hot then I’ll do it myself.”

Sombra gave him an assessing look that came and went fast enough that Jesse wondered if he saw it at all. “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”

“Tomorrow? I don’t know. I’ve never been a big New Year’s person. I hate the loud crowds and drunks, and I’ve never really understood the whole ‘resolution’ shit. If you want to do somethin’, just do it. A calendar flippin’ over isn’t going to help self-discipline any.”

“Well then, tell me how you really feel, Jesse,” Sombra blinked. “I was going to ask if you wanted to join me for a quiet drink to bring in the new year, but maybe not if you’re this bitchy about it.”

Jesse flushed, “No, I...it’s just more the huge crowds and people being loud and stupid thing I don’t like. I had to work security for a couple of big events and it soured me to it. A quiet drink sounds nice, though.”

Sombra gave a small smile. “I’m glad. You know the little bar, next to the crêpe shop on 54th?”

Nodding, Jesse said, “Yeah - wait.” He narrowed his eyes at Sombra, who looked as innocent as her naturally-mischievous face could be. “Is this just goin’ to be us, or is a certain friend of yours who is a regular at that bar goin’ to join us because you’re a rude little matchmaker?”

Sombra gave an exaggerated shrug and shake of her head, eyes wide. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Jessito. I have not talked to anyone about New Year’s plans until you, just now.”

“Somehow I don’t believe you.”

“Well, then that is your fault. I’ll see you at...eleven? Yes. Try and look decent, marshmallow man. Self-esteem will only get you so far.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse was glaring at his bed, and the clothing on it. Maybe Sombra was just fucking with him, and it would be just the two of them - which would be fine, he really liked Sombra and would be happy to ring the new year in with her. Or. Maybe Reyes was coming. Thanks to the end of the semester, Jesse had literally only seen him once or twice passing in the halls plus across the room at morning meetings, not having been able to say anything other than the occasional ‘hey’. 

They made out for five minutes, kissed once more, then…nothing? No texts, no calls. It wasn’t like they really texted or called outside of functional purposes, but still. Jesse wondered if Reyes had told Sombra anything. Reyes was a pretty private person, but Sombra was a proven exception. Argh. Jesse just shouldn’t count on anything, and just take this as it was. 

He debated about texting fashion-plate Genji, but hesitated on a couple of fronts. One was the inevitable mocking that he knew would be delivered to him and the questions about why exactly he cared about what he looked like right now. The other was that Jesse didn’t know what Genji’s holiday plans were, and if he was seeing his brother the last thing he needed was his brother’s ex making his face known. Even if he and Genji were friends. 

Argh.

Jesse finally spun around a few times with a hand over his eyes and pointed a finger. Dark jeans and a close-fitting dark red button up. That would work, he looked good in red and it was festive. See? Nothing to do with looking good for a particular person at all, he was just celebrating the season. Jesse showered, shaving carefully and fussing at his hair until finally giving up. He needed another haircut, it was getting pretty long. _ Leave it alone, Jesse. Whatever happens will happen. _

Half an hour later, Jesse was walking down the stairs into the bar. He still didn’t know the name of it, he couldn’t see any sign on the outside. Despite being one of the biggest nights in drinking, the place was nearly empty, except for...yep, there was Reyes, sitting at the seat he’d been in last time they were here, watching fireworks on the television screen above him. 

Sliding into the seat next to Reyes: “Hey, stranger.”

The man turned, genuine surprise on his face. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

“Sombra told me to meet her here, apparently takin’ pity on me for not having any plans.”

“Ah, my favorite little busybody,” Reyes said with a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Bets that she shows up at all tonight?”

“Not worth it.”

Jesse ordered a beer, and asked Reyes about his holiday. He wasn’t a fan of Sombra’s brother, though he apparently tried to hide it for her sake. “He’s just so...mercantile. Capitalistic. I don’t know. He just can’t understand enjoying work for what you get out of it other than money.”

“So not your first choice to add to our staff?”

“Jesus, no. Morrison would love his budget ideas and everyone else would band together and kill him within a week. Anyways. Enough about that asshole, how was your Christmas?”

Jesse told him about going back to New Mexico, seeing his small army of extended family. “I’m not sure how we’re all related at this point, I just label them all cousins and call it a day.”

Though he grew up on the west coast, Reyes had never been to anywhere in the southwest. “I was in LA, and then the Marines, not a lot of travel time in there.”

“I’ve only lived here and New Mexico, but I’ve traveled to most of the states over the years, especially for official stuff for the park service. Family is all centered near Roswell now, so that’s where I go back to.”

“Wait, Roswell? Like the aliens?”

“It’s one of the biggest cities in the state, with amazing state parks and a robust economy, and what does everyone know it for? The goddamn aliens.”

Reyes laughed quietly, “Struck a nerve, there, cowboy?”

Jesse sighed. “The city itself leans into it, which drives me nuts. I get that it brings in tourism, but it’s such a gorgeous area that could stand on its own terms. You ever heard of Bottomless Lakes State Park?”

Reyes said wryly, “Somehow missed that one.”

Jesse fake-frowned, “Hush, you. Anyways, it’s this like...strip of lakes just south of the city. They’re all really circular, and in this serpentine line. It’s super flat everywhere in the area, and the lakes are cenotes, basically collapsed sinkholes that are fed by underground streams. They’re all deep and mostly there are cliffs goin’ down to them, and they have these critters that aren’t found anywhere else in the world. My favorite is the lil’ one called the Devil’s Inkwell, it can look totally black and really eerie in the right light.”

Jesse stopped, looking at the expression on Reyes’s face. “What? Don’t laugh at me.”

“I wouldn’t laugh at you,” Reyes said, shaking his head. “Not for this, anyways. You’re just so...passionate about the things you care about. I, just. I like that a lot about you.” He gave Jesse a small smile that felt like it was a secret thing, just for him.

They sat there looking at each other for a minute and just as Jesse was opening his mouth to respond, the bartender turned the volume up on the television. They looked up to see a talking head begin to count down to the new year.

Shoulder to shoulder, Jesse and Reyes watched the countdown. The bartender put small glasses of champagne in front of them that they ignored. “Five...four...three...two...one!”

“Happy New Year, Jesse.” Reyes had that small smile on his face again.

“Happy New Year, Gabe.” Jesse slid forward off his chair and tilted Reyes’s head back with a gentle hand, bending down to meet his lips.

Reyes slid his arms around Jesse’s waist, pulling him forward between his thighs. He pushed up into Jesse’s mouth, flicking his lips apart with a velvet-soft tongue. Jesse swallowed a moan and tilted his head, only to be met a few seconds later with a closed mouth pulling away from him.

Jesse looked down into eyes that were all pupil. “I’m not getting kicked out of here, come on,” Reyes growled and manhandled Jesse backwards. He pulled a few bills from a pocket and tossed them on the table, not interrupting his hustling them to the door. The cold of outdoors was like a slap to Jesse’s face, cooling his lust and bringing him closer to his senses. “Where…” he trailed off and let himself be towed by the arm down the street. That’s right, he hazily thought, Reyes lived near here.

Reyes went up the steps of a townhouse just a few doors down, fishing keys out of his pocket. He opened the door and pulled Jesse in, using Jesse’s back to push the door shut as he pinned him against it. Jesse’s eyes fluttered shut as Reyes covered him with his body, mouths meeting in a hard kiss. This was nothing like the sweet kisses of the hotel, or the slow kiss of a minute ago. This was Reyes demanding entrance into his mouth and licking the taste of the beer away so all of Jesse’s senses read ‘Gabriel Reyes’.

Jesse pushed Reyes’s coat off of his shoulders, muttering “Take this sweatshirt off, I swear to fucking god- ”  Reyes stepped back to pull the sweatshirt off as Jesse toed out of his shoes and tossed his own coat somewhere to the side. Reyes pulled Jesse to him by the shirt, showing admirable multitasking by walking them backwards, stepping out of his shoes, and unbuttoning Jesse’s shirt all at the same time.

By the time they reached the bedroom door upstairs, they were both down to pants. Jesse couldn’t stop running his hands over the other man’s chest - he had known Reyes was in shape, but shirts had kept covered a broad muscled expanse, light tangles of hair leading past a slightly softened middle down into his pants. Jesse flicked open the button of Reyes’s jeans with nimble fingers and slipped his hand inside. Reyes’s head thunked against the door with a hollow sound as Jesse felt out the shape of his cock under fabric. Sucking a light mark into his neck, he murmured, “How’s your refractory period?”

Reyes looked at him, confusion in his lust-fogged eyes. “What?”

“I mean, how fast can you get it up again, Gabriel?” Jesse enunciated clearly into the other man’s ear. “Because I’d really like you to come down my throat and then again on my cock, but if I have to pick one I suppose I can live with it.”

“Jesus Christ Jesse, you can’t just say that,” Reyes said raggedly, as Jesse felt the underwear under his hand dampen with a sudden burst of precome. 

“Well?” Jesse bit an earlobe.

Reyes moved his head and met Jesse’s lips in a rough kiss, biting at his lower lip as they separated. As Jesse opened his eyes, Reyes pushed gently down on his shoulders. Jesse happily followed, pulling down Reyes’s pants as he sank to his knees. His cock bobbed in the air, dark skin shading prettily into red at the head, thick vein twining up its underside. Jesse licked a stripe up the shaft, hearing Reyes catch his breath. The room was dark, but the streetlights turned the air outside to a muted orange, the snowflakes scattering the light. A drop of fluid shone in that light at the tip of Reyes’s cock, and Jesse caught it with his tongue before it could fall.

Jesse slid forward, resting between splayed legs and started up a rhythm, taking in more each time. Clenching his left thumb in a fist, Jesse opened his throat the best he could. Reyes must have showered recently, he tasted faintly of soap and skin and musk. Long fingers threaded through Jesse’s overlong hair, fingers pulling tight but gently guiding his head back and forth. Jesse cradled Reyes’s balls with a hand before letting his fingers trail back. He pressed hard against his perineum as he gave a particularly strong suck, and wasn’t surprised when Reyes suddenly came with a gasp of what sounded like surprise. That wire-tight control that always seemed to hold up his limbs loosened, and he bent half over, head coming down nearly to meet Jesse’s. Jesse swallowed down everything Reyes had to give him, pulling back and licking away stray drops from his lips.

Jesse rocked back on his heels and stood up, knees giving a quiet pop. He stepped forward, wrapping his arms around Reyes’s torso and biting gentle marks around his collarbone. Reyes nosed Jesse’s head up until their lips met again, and pushed Jesse towards the bed with a murmur of “god can taste myself on you.” 

Jesse let himself fall back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows as Reyes stripped him of his pants. Reyes looked at his cock with an expression that made the simmering heat in Jesse flare, warmth running through his chest downwards.  Reyes closed his eyes as his head descended, looking like he wanted nothing more in this world than to be right where he was. Jesse could feel his nerves sparking in a way that was too good - god, how was he so affected just by the look on his face? Knowing he wouldn’t last if the blowjob continued, Jesse sat up, pulling Reyes’s face towards his so he could catch his lips in a bruising kiss. He let himself sink back down on the bed, covered by a blanket of naked gym teacher.

They thrust against each other lazily, slow hips belying nipping mouths. Jesse reached down and slid a hand over Reyes’s ass. “You have anything?” He wasn’t proud of the rasp in his voice.

Reyes nodded and rolled to Jesse’s side, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a tube of lube and a condom. Jesse reached over and grabbed the lube, pushing Reyes down onto his back. He slicked up a finger and traced it down, leaving a thin trail down Reyes’s rehardening cock. He slipped his hand further down and pulled Reyes’s legs apart, letting him tap a fingerpad against the tightly furled opening. “Feels like it might have been awhile, there, Gabe.”

“Too long.”

Jesse’s finger slipped inside, and Reyes let out a soft groan. His deep voice was half an octave lower than usual, smearing dark words against Jesse’s neck. He didn’t expect Reyes to be a talker, but he murmured constantly, occasional words like ‘want’ or ‘good’ or ‘Jesse’ becoming intelligible. As Jesse added another finger, Reyes’s cock left sticky trails against Jesse’s stomach with its slow thrusts. He idly wondered if Reyes always gets this wet, or if it’s all just for him. 

Jesse methodically stroked into Reyes, brainlessly twisting his fingers as he focused on nibbling another dark mark into his neck ( _ wanted to mark him up everywhere, brand him with mineminemine _ ) when his fingers were pulled free with a hand on his wrist. Reyes looked at him with dark, needy eyes and kiss-swollen lips that mouthed “please” like it was something Jesse could resist. He rolled on the condom and stroked it once with a hand slicked with body-warm lube that was in Reyes just moments before. Jesse pushed Reyes over onto his side and slid behind him, holding one leg up as he pushed forward carefully, every slickgrittysweet inch gained a victory. He bottomed out and they breathed together, Jesse letting Reyes’s leg down and moving his hand to a sharp hip bone. 

He pulled out and then slammed back in, obscene sounds coming from where their bodies meet. They developed a harsh rhythm, one stable enough that Jesse could slide his hand from Reyes’s hip to his wet cock, using his own slick to smooth his hand’s way. Reyes must have been telling the truth when he said it had been a while, he was so tight around Jesse that it all was going to be over sooner rather than later. It had been so long since Jesse had been with someone who wanted him like this, been so long that they had been dancing around each other. Jesse’s hips gave a warning stutter and he stroked Reyes fast, wanting to come with the other man clenching around him.

Jesse fell first, though, his senses shattering into shards like ice. He bit down on Reyes’s shoulder to muffle his groan, that sensation pushing the other man over, pulling an echoing moan from deep in his chest and streams of white from his twitching cock that covered both their hands. Heartbeats and breathing slowed down, afterglow seemingly literal in the surreal diffuse orange light from outside.

Jesse pulled out with a wet sound, tying off the condom and dropping it into the trash by the bed. He grabbed a discarded piece of clothing - shirt? underwear? - and used it to clean off their hands and Reyes’s chest, then gently wiped the excess lube from Reyes’s ass. He turned to toss the fabric away and when he turned back long arms pulled him down. 

“Stay,” Reyes murmured in his ear, wrecked voice sounding like honey to Jesse’s ears. He wordlessly curled into the other man’s chest and closed his eyes, drifting into a haze of endorphins and soft emotions.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse slowly swam up to awareness. There was an odd half-light behind his eyelids - he wasn’t home? He felt skin and hair under his cheek and a hand on his back. That’s right, he drowsily thought as he relaxed back down. New Year’s Eve and Gabe.

Opening his eyes, Jesse tilted his neck back and met the half-closed eyes of Reyes. “Happy New Year, Jesse,” he murmured. 

“You too,” said Jesse, voice rough with sleep. “What time is it?” 

“Early. Sun’s not up yet.”

“Dunno how you sleep with the streetlights, ‘specially reflectin’ off the snow. This room must never get dark.”

“Mh. Used to it. Don’t know if I could sleep in full darkness at this point.”

Jesse made a quiet noise of contentment as Reyes combed his fingers through his hair. Jesse could only imagine the bedhead he must be sporting right now ( _ especially after Reyes had pulled his hair with such enthusiasm,  _ he thought with a flicker of warmth), but Reyes gently untangled the strands with slow, meditative movements. 

Fingers snagged and tugged. “Sorry.”

“Don’ worry. I don’ mind,” Jesse mumbled

A rumble under his cheek. “Got that feeling last night, a bit.” The fingers gathered up the long hair and slowly pulled, until Jesse’s neck was a long curved line backwards. Slightly chapped lips surrounded by soft hair kissed gently up the tanned column of his throat, until Reyes was in that spot just behind his jawbone that made Jesse breathe harder.

Jesse felt like he was moving through syrup - they were outside of time in the snow-filled half light. He moved a hand down to pull Reyes’s hips against his own, both men making small noises as blood-heavy cocks slid against each other. Their legs tangled together as they slowly rutted against each other’s hipbones, not quite enough stimulation to come but enough to generate a low-level arousal. Reyes mouthed his way across Jesse’s face until he caught his lips. Jesse turned away with a soft, awkward chuckle, “Can’t imagine I taste good right now.” 

Reyes used the hand in Jesse’s hair to gently pull his head where he wanted it. “The last thing you ate was me, so let’s call it my fault,” he whispered against Jesse’s lips. “Mmgh,” was Jesse’s intelligent reply. The bitterness of sleep dwindled until the only thing they could taste was each other. 

Jesse’s hand trailed down until he could slide it in between their bodies. He grasped them together the best he could in one hand, strokes that had to be light with no lube. He let himself go, wrapping his hand around just Reyes, who took a breath against Jesse’s lips. Jesse let his fingers wander, tracing here and there until he found a spot just under the head that made Reyes break off his kisses in favor of his brow furrowing and his eyes clenching shut. He came with a sigh, face relaxing as his hips tightened, sticky warmth spreading between them. When Jesse moved to grasp himself, a large hand pushed his away. Reyes’s calluses were softened by using his own come to smooth the way, but Jesse still shivered in pleasure when a rough spot caught sensitive skin. A small noise of contentment came with his orgasm - nothing earth shattering but instead the simple pleasure of safe, quiet release.

They lay breathing each other’s air in the early morning light, until Reyes pulled back with a “Let me grab something.” Jesse stretched, watching muscles shift under skin as Reyes walked naked to the bathroom. He heard water run and Reyes exited with a damp washcloth and clean skin. He paused by the side of the bed, looking down at Jesse. Jesse felt himself flushing under the direct gaze and shifted around.

“What?”

“Could look at you, covered in us, all day.”

Jesse blushed harder, now more aware than ever of the come streaking his stomach. He was saved by Reyes flopping down next to him and wiping him down with the washcloth. He tossed it to the side and pulled on Jesse’s shoulders until he had wrapped him in his arms.

Breathing into Reyes’s neck, the faintest trace of citrus cologne still there under the scents of sweat and sex, Jesse spoke quietly, “I don’t want this to be a one time thing.”

Reyes didn’t outwardly react, one arm wrapped around Jesse’s shoulders while the other traced mindless patterns into his lower back, but Jesse could feel his pulse speeding up against his cheek. “It won’t be.”

Jesse relaxed into the arms that held him. Consciousness could wait until later in the day.


	9. Chapter 9

They both awoke some hours later, morning light filling the room, to the buzz of Reyes’s phone. He reached over and snagged it from the nightstand, not letting go of Jesse. A quiet laugh vibrated under Jesse’s cheek.

“A certain nosy someone wanted to know how my night went.”

Jesse smiled, eyes still closed. “Tell her to fuck off. Or thank you. Or both.” He felt Reyes’s arm stretch for a minute, then felt tendons shift in his forearm as he typed something.

“Mind if I send this? I can delete if you want.” Reyes dangled his phone in front of Jesse’s face. It was a selfie of the two of them, just the bottom half of Reyes’s face, his neck, then the top half of Jesse’s face with closed eyes resting on Reyes’s chest. The caption below read ‘fuck off dear’.

“Only if you send it to me, too.” He heard the buzz of his own phone somewhere in the room as Reyes did just that.

“She says you’re welcome.”

“We should buy her a bottle of somethin’.”

“Nah, she doesn’t deserve that much credit.” Gentle lips met Jesse’s forehead. Jesse yawned and sat up, turning to look down at the broad body stretched out next to him. 

“If you keep looking at me like that then we’ll never leave this bed, kid.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“Maybe not, but I’d be a lot more awake with some coffee in me.” 

Reyes rolled to the side, coming up with some boxer briefs that he pulled on. Jesse looked around for his own underwear, only to find that they were what he’d used to clean them up last night. Waving them at Reyes, he asked, “Got some I can borrow? These aren’t fit for anythin’ right now.” Reyes opened a drawer in a massive wooden bureau-like structure, and tossed Jesse a pair of underwear similar to what he was wearing. 

“We’re close enough, those should fit.” 

Jesse pulled on the underwear and followed Reyes down the hall and stairs, looking around curiously. As it was dark and they were...otherwise occupied the night before, he hadn’t seen much of anything. It was a nice place, clean and organized with lots of windows and hardwood floors. Jesse sat down at the counter that divided the kitchen from the dining area and watched Reyes putter around. “How long have you lived here?” 

“God, twelve...no, thirteen years now. Rented until I realized I didn’t want to go anywhere else then bought the place. Got my room, spare room, weight room and bathroom upstairs,” he waved a hand around, “and everything else down here.”

“Weight room upstairs? That’s brave.”

Reyes was rooting through the freezer now. “One day I swear I’m going to crash through the floor. Keep meaning to switch it and the office down here around, but I’ve been meaning to for a decade and it keeps not happening.” Thunking a cabinet door shut, Reyes turned around with annoyed hands on his hips. “I’m out of goddamned coffee.”

“Is the crêpe place open?”

“Let me check.” Reyes pulled a battered laptop off of a counter and tapped at it. “New years hours say they open at ten. And it’s...eleven now. So yes.”

They padded back upstairs, Jesse enjoying the view of Reyes walking up in front of him. As Reyes pulled on his hoodie-and-track-pants uniform, Jesse grabbed his nice jeans from where they’d been discarded on the floor. 

“You want to borrow some sweats? Unless you have somewhere to be right after,” Reyes said somewhat awkwardly, watching Jesse start to pull up the tight jeans. 

“No no, please, I have no desire to fit my ass into anything non-stretch until school starts.” Jesse took the OHS labelled sweat pants and one of the ubiquitous hoodies with a nod of thanks. They brushed their teeth in the bathroom, shoulders bumping together. Jesse used a new brush Reyes hadn’t opened yet, and tossed it into the cup alongside Reyes’s own when he was done. 

Fitting phones and keys into various pockets they went downstairs and outside, shivering in the chill air. The cafe was quiet, only a few people scattered at various tables. They ordered coffee and food, grabbing a table between the fireplace and a window. When their order came up Jesse carried over the mugs and Reyes brought the plates, Jesse’s stomach growling as they laid everything out.

“I could hear that from over here,” Reyes said, mouth turning up at the corner.

“I’m a growing boy,” Jesse said as he stuffed the corner of a goat cheese and sundried tomato crêpe in his mouth. “And I’m refueling after expending so much energy last night.” He took another bite as he trailed a toe up Reyes’s calf. Reyes reddened a little but smiled, catching Jesse’s foot under his own. He pulled out his phone for a second before digging in to his own plate.

“Getting a photo for your instagram?” At Reyes’s cocked head, Jesse laughed ruefully. “I ended up finding it by accident awhile ago, saw a picture of Sombra and wondered who took it.”

Reyes’s eyes crinkled around a mouthful of waffle. “I’m not much of a food blogger, so not this time, but yeah - all kinds of crap ends up on there. I’m not a serious photographer at all, but I like to try to slow down to look at the world if I can.”

“What I saw, was all,” Jesse paused as he swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Little moments. Quiet lil’ fragments. I liked it.”

“Thank you,” Reyes said quietly, and for a while they ate in quiet, comfortable silence.

“Gabe!” a familiar voice raised both their heads. Genji came up to their table, to-go cup of tea in his hand. “And...Jesse! Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year, Genji,” they chorused, as Genji looked at them. His sharp eyes went from one to the other, taking in tousled hair and Jesse’s borrowed clothing. A large smile spread across his face. “Well then. Have a good new year, did we?”

Jesse covered his face with a hand as Reyes sighed. “You’re going to be insufferable, I can tell.”

Genji pulled out a chair as Jesse slumped lower in his seat and Reyes muttered “No, no, just sit yourself down, it’s fine.”

“Sooo. Is this a new thing?” Genji looked like one of their teenage students, sharing the juiciest gossip.

Jesse stared at the ceiling as Reyes said flatly, “Sorta.”

Genji opened his mouth to ask something that would surely be totally appropriate and easy to answer when Reyes held up a hand to stop him. “Listen, Shimada. You know we both like you as a friend and colleague. But. We’re just figuring this out ourselves and we don’t need you in the middle of it right now, okay?’

Genji sat back, smile still on his face. “Alright, alright. Just know that I am happy for you.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Several people will be happy for you, in fact. I think I may have just won some money off of Oxton.”

Reyes glowered. “What.”

Genji shrugged as he stood up, finding it prudent to be ready and make a quick exit. “You two are not the most...subtle people in the world with your affections.” As Reyes started to stand, Genji backed up, towards the entrance. “You are very cute I love you both use protection bye!” He laughingly darted out the door as Reyes sat back down.

Jesse exhaled heavily. “Well.”

Reyes ran a hand through his hair. “Indeed.” He looked into his coffee cup. “We. We probably should talk about. This. Us.”

“I like you,” Jesse said simply. “And I’d like for us to be a thing.” 

Reyes meet Jesse’s eyes sheepishly. “That was...easier than I thought it would be. I feel the same, by the by.”

Jesse shrugged. “I’m at the point in life where I’d rather not waste time on ‘oh what are we blah blah blah’ and just get on with things. We have enough stress at work, why make more at home?”

“That’s...a thing, though.” Jesse looked askance at Reyes. “Will it be okay, at work? How far in the closet do we have to stay?”

“Not at all, pretty much. We’re lucky that way, progressive staff and admin that doesn’t really care as long as we’re professional and get our work done properly. No extra favors or whatever. Given we’re different departments-” 

“We are our own damn departments,” Jesse interrupted with an annoyed growl.

Reyes continued with a smirk, “- it shouldn’t matter that much, but I should check the union handbook to make sure I don’t have to sign anything, being the rep. I don’t think it’ll matter, though. No one will care, I promise. I mean, hell, I dated Jack for a minute there.”

Jesse’s mouth dropped open. “Morrison?  _ Seriously? _ ”

“It was twenty years ago, when I first started and he was still a teacher. It was all of a month, give me a break.”

Jesse paused, in thought. “What did he teach?”

“We had an agriculture department back then.”

“Ah ha ah, that so works with him!” Jesse laughed. “I could see him as a farm boy.”

“Farm boy by way of the army, don’t write him off. But yeah. Don’t get him started on potatoes and monocultures, you’ll be there for hours.”

Jesse smiled, then froze. He turned his head towards the window - “Don’t look, but we might have some company.”

Reyes frowned. “What?” He glanced around.

“What part of don’t-- Hi, Ms. Amari,” Jesse said with a tight smile.

“Hello, dear. Call me Ana, please. Oh, and Gabriel! How was your holiday?” 

Ana Amari, delicately embroidered scarf wrapped around her under a well-cut coat, stood smiling next to a tall woman in her early 30s with a similar tattoo to Ana’s under her eye. 

“Good, Ana. And Fareeha! Long time no see, kiddo.” 

The younger woman smiled, “I was in town visiting Mom and Angela, we just ran into another of your coworkers down the street who recommended this place.” 

Jesse kicked Reyes under the table. “That must have been Genji, we just spoke to him.” Holding up a hand, Jesse gave his most endearing smile. “Jesse McCree, Spanish teacher at the high school. You’re certainly living up to the picture that Angela painted of you.”

Fareeha shook his hand. “Fareeha Amari. You must be popular with the students with such charm.”

“Students and teachers too, it seems.” Ana gave a bland smile, locking her eye with Reyes’s. “We’re such a family at Overwatch, it’s always good to remember that families are permanent, regardless of what else might happen in life.”

Reyes calmly sipped his coffee. “You sound tense, Ana. Perhaps less caffeine this time of day?”

“You know I only want the best for you, Gabriel.”

“We’re the same age, Ana, so stop mothering me.”

“Hmph.”

Fareeha rolled her eyes and tugged at her mother’s arm. “Stop doing the scary army thing, Mom. Whatever issue you think exists, I’m sure it’s fine. Let’s go eat.”

Ana shook her arm off. “We’re all fine,  _ habibi _ .” Jesse found himself pinned by her gaze. “Right, dear? You will be fine.” It didn’t sound like a choice.

“Yes ma’am.”

“It was great to meet you, Jesse,” Fareeha said with a smile. “We should all get together for dinner, sometime I’m in town. Now come  _ on _ , mother.”

“Gentlemen.”

As they walked off, Jesse exhaled for what felt like the first time in five minutes. “That was...something.”

Reyes sighed. “Aaand that was the one person I was worried about. She can get...overprotective about the smooth sailing of the staff, doesn’t like disruptions. This - we - are something new, so she’s being prickly.”

“More important than that, though: did we just get invited on a double date with her daughter and Angela?”

A smile tugged at Reyes’s mouth. “You know, I think we did.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse tucked a scrap of page into the book he was reading and set it aside, nestling down into the couch. 

“Tired?” came a rumble above him. Jesse responded by pushing his cheek further into Reyes’s thigh and pulling the throw blanket up higher.

“I don’t wanna go to school,” Jesse grumbled.

“We’re the teachers. We don’t really have a choice. And there’s still one more day before professional development.”

“Yeah. I should probably go home soon, actually see my apartment for the first time in five days.”

“Actually wear clothes that aren’t my old gym shit?”

“That, too.” Jesse had meant to go home after breakfast on New Year’s, and it just...didn’t happen. He and Reyes had lazed around for days, limiting activities to eating, sleeping, reading, watching tv, and having frankly ridiculous amounts of sex. He was pretty sure the last time that Reyes had gone to the grocery store it was primarily to stock up on condoms and lube.

“Come on, let’s go sleep on a bed at least.” He traced Jesse’s cheekbone with a finger. “One last night of vacation together.” Jesse turned his head to look up at Reyes and the finger skated over until it was resting on Jesse’s lower lip. It took the tiniest bit of effort to lean forward and pull the finger into his mouth, tongue flickering over the pad.

“Nngh. You and that silver tongue of yours.”

Jesse pushed the finger to the side of his mouth so he could speak. “I’m just laying here, I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about -” he curled his tongue around the finger, sucking it deeper. 

“Well, I can’t allow this behavior to stand,” Reyes stood, letting Jesse’s head drop to the couch, then leaned down and picked the other man up, slinging him over his shoulder.

“Put me down, dick! I’m too heavy, you’ll drop me!”

“Fireman’s carry, I can lift heavier than you,  _ pendejo _ .” He slapped Jesse’s ass as he went up the stairs. “You brought this upon yourself.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, and the house echoed with laughter.


	10. Chapter 10

Jesse debated about putting sunglasses on, so he could hide his eyes that kept drifting shut and maybe take a nap. Morrison’s voice droned on in the overwarm student union, talking about criterion-referenced assessments, and Jesse just couldn’t deal with twenty minutes of talking about what could have been delivered in an email.

The session finally ended, everyone standing and stretching. “Are they feeding us, or are we on our own for lunch?” asked Satya.

“They’re giving us some kind of sandwich bar,” said Angela. “I hope there’s something vegetarian,” she muttered to herself.

They found the sandwich bar in the cafeteria, and everyone started assembling their creations. Jesse found a seat between Reyes and Winston, sitting across from Angela. 

“How...are you actually going to fit that in your mouth?” asked Angela in slight horror, staring at the meat-cheese-and-vegetable monstrosity on Jesse’s plate.

“It’s like something out of Scooby-Doo,” Satya said, sitting down next to Angela. 

“I’m a growing boy, okay. I’ll run it off,” said Jesse, taking a defiant bite that was ruined by mustard dripping down his chin.

“You are truly a marvel of decorum.” Angela daintily dipped a carrot in hummus.

“Anything interesting planned for your lot this semester?” Winston asked Jesse. “The Halloween stuff was a hit.”

Jesse shrugged, swallowing. “I gotta sort through it. Most Spanish speaking countries are fairly predominantly Catholic, so a lot of the celebrations are related to Easter. That gets tricky, I don’t want to make anyone feel excluded. I think I’ll do something with Carnaval, but the kids get confused with how the big one is in Brazil, and most of them don’t know that Spanish and Portuguese are different languages.”

“Not to mention keeping it PG-13,” said Angela. “Fareeha and I happened upon the celebration in Rio when we were stationed there some years back, and while it was beautiful I saw things I will never unsee.”

“Yep. Especially because everyone will start searching up pictures, and god knows what they’ll turn up. Maybe I could do something for Valentine’s Day,” Jesse said thoughtfully.

“They could do the candygrams in Spanish, maybe?” suggested Satya.

“Candygrams?” asked Jesse.

“It’s a fundraiser for student council, for prom. You can buy a chocolate rose to send to someone, and for an extra few bucks they’ll sing, too. It’s a nightmare,” stated Reyes.

“Shush, you grump. It’s sweet, and you find out very suddenly who everyone’s crushes are. The kids are very unsubtle,” Angela threw a cherry tomato at Reyes, who caught it and popped it in his mouth.

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you don’t have to teach through it. The whole damn class comes to a stop so they all can go on about it. I’ve given up on teaching anything of substance that day,” Reyes complained.

Jesse nudged him under the table with a foot. “It sounds nice. I just won’t plan anything major. Maybe Valentines written in Spanish, talk about customs in other countries.”

“There’s always Cinco de Mayo,” Winston suggested.

Reyes put his head in his hands. “Oh no.”

Jesse slammed his sandwich down with an oozing of mustard. 

“What’s wrong?” Angela asked Reyes, sotto voce.

“I’ve heard this lecture before. It’s not pretty.”

“Cinco de Mayo is a completely misunderstood holiday, that has been co-opted by the United States in an inauthentic celebration of Mexican culture. It is just an excuse for drunk white people to eat tacos and wear sombreros. I swear to god, I will give fifty dollars to anyone in this room who can identify what it’s even goddamn celebrating.”

Winston looked at him, wide-eyed, mouth opening even as Reyes ineffectively slashed his hands in the air to stop him behind Jesse’s back. “Isn’t it Mexican Inde-”

“No, it is NOT Mexican Independence Day,  _ that _ is the goddamn Cry of Dolores and it’s in September! General Ignacio Zaragoza - ” 

Before he could continue Reyes shoved a cookie in his mouth. “Shut the hell up, kid, and eat a cookie.”

Jesse grumpily munched through the cookie. “It’s a dumb holiday. And I hate margaritas.”

“Mmmhmm. Have another cookie.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Professional development ended, January 8th  at 7:30 am came far too soon, and Jesse found himself back in the whirlwind of teaching. Winter break was just long enough that the kids had to relearn how to sit down and take notes without popping up from their seats every five seconds. Jesse understood how it was easy to get out of good habits - he hadn’t run in a week, justifying it to himself by saying he burned off calories in the bedroom - but he still had to get them up to speed. Spring was when state testing hit, and they would lose weeks of instructional time.

Friday last period rolled around and he wandered to the gym to locate Reyes. To his surprise, all the students were sitting on the bleachers while Reyes wrote on a whiteboard on wheels. It turned out that this was health class. As the students packed up their things, Reyes sat next to Jesse on the bleachers. 

“It turns out that they needed my classroom this period for a college credit course, so I’m in here. I think I might bring the other class over here too, just so I don’t have to split teaching in two rooms.”

“What are you teaching this semester, anyways?” Unlike nearly every other class bar a few oddball electives, nearly all gym and health classes were a half credit each and so only one semester long.

“Two sections of health, three of regular gym, one advanced gym.” 

“Isn’t that too many, shouldn’t you have the union plan?”

“Ironically, I lost it this semester. Technically it was my choice, but the advanced gym class is a full-year class and if I wanted the plan I would have had to cut it down and screw over those kids. They offered me a stipend instead so I took it.”

“Ah,” Jesse shifted awkwardly for a moment. “Do you not want me to come visit, if you’re doing health? I mean, it’s one thing to bother you during gym but now that you’re really teaching…”

“What, like I don’t really teach in gym?” Reyes snickered as Jesse sputtered. “Nah, I know what you mean. You know I always want you around, you’re always welcome.” He leaned back and stretched out his arms, something that was far more effective now that Jesse knew what lay under the sweatshirt. “Hey, maybe you could help me with the condom demonstration.”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh. And I even have non-anatomically correct plastic models on which to do it on.”

“...really.”

“Hey, it beats the bananas I used to use. Winston would eat up most of them but god damn did I get sick of banana bread.”

Jesse side-eyed Reyes, who gave a full-body shrug. “I am completely serious. I do teach the sex ed unit pretty straightforwardly, they really need to know on how not to screw up their lives. I’ve taught kids who got pregnant in high school and came out relatively unscathed, but god it is a hard road that I’d rather they avoid.”

Jesse nodded. “My first year I had a freshman get pregnant. Great student, but her life changed so completely that even with all the support we could give her it was a struggle just for her GED. Last I heard she was doing well, though, I think the kid must be in preschool by this point.”

“Between Angela and me the kids can get all the condoms they want, no questions asked. Well, unless they take a whole bunch, then you know the water balloons are coming.”

“Ew.”

“Indeed. Still worth it if they keep safe.”

Reyes checked his phone. “We’re free, finally. You doing anything, now?”

Jesse stood and stretched. “Unfortunately, yes. I have to reformat pretty much all my lesson plans because they changed the stupid state standards again and now the learning system won’t let me input anything. It’s gonna take all weekend.” He reached down to give Reyes a hand up. “Tomorrow night? Dinner?”

“Sure.” Their lips met in a soft kiss before Reyes jumped down. “Help me push these in?”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse McCree (7:33 am): hey are you going to the athletics meeting morrison just mentioned tonight

Gabriel Reyes (7:34 am): We are literally in a meeting right now Jesse. Stop texting.

Gabriel Reyes (7:34 am): And yes.

Jesse McCree (7:35 am): yay can we do indian after satya told me about a good restaurant

Gabriel Reyes (7:36 am) Stop texting you ingrate. And sure as long as they have those kashmiri naan.

\---

Lena Oxton (7:36 am): stop texting u ass or they’ll make all of us put away our phones

Jesse McCree (7:36 am): ok ok sorry

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse and Reyes walked into the auditorium of Blizzard High School. There were four different high schools in their district, Overwatch, Blizzard, Talon, and Vishkar. Blizzard was the largest, Overwatch the smallest, Talon was OHS’s big intra-district rival, and Vishkar was on the opposite side of the district and Jesse knew little about them. With some sports, each high school had its own team, but occasionally, like with the Overwatch-Blizzard football team, they combined.

Jesse wanted to hear about the spring sports - cross country in their district was limited to fall/winter only, but there might be something he could do.

“Gabriel!” An accented voice bellowed from the side of the room. Jesse turned and looked up...and up to see a very tall woman with pink hair and biceps the size of his head pick Reyes up for a hug like he was a child. Reyes pounded her back with a grin. She set him down, and turned to Jesse with a smile. 

“Hello! I am Zarya, you must be Jesse McCree.”

“I am,” said Jesse with a smile as his hand was enveloped in a shake. “After so many emails and calls, it’s great to finally meet you in person.”

“Da. And I wanted to congratulate you on your medals, we have not had anyone from the district get cross-country medals in some years now. You and Lena are a credit to us.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Have you thought about what you will be doing this spring? Because I have thoughts.”

“No, that’s actually why I came, to see what was up. I’ve done cross-country and wrestling, but I know that’s Reyes’s area. And I’m hopin’ to start up a shooting club, Ms Amari has given her blessin’, but that’ll just be a non-competitive school thing to start.”

Zarya wrapped an arm around Jesse’s shoulders and started walking him to one side of the room. “Have you ever thought about track and field?”

Jesse shrugged the best he could. “Not really. I can run fast and teach other people to run fast, that’s it. I was always too big to jump and I was never into throwing, and sprinting is a totally different animal than the kind of runnin’ I’m into.”

Jesse found himself in front of two young people who practically looked like they could be his students. “Jesse, this is Lúcio Correia dos Santos, the track and field coach at BHS, and his assistant coach Hana Song.” Zarya pushed him forward with a thump on the back. “I will return.”

Jesse looked at the two bright happy faces in front of him. “...hi?”

Lúcio reached out a hand to shake. “Hi! Zarya said that you’d done really well with the cross country team at Overwatch and frankly, we could use some help with running. I train everyone with jumps and Zarya handles the throwing, but we don’t have anyone to work with our middle and long distance runners. I know it’s different than cross country, but not that different, hopefully?”

“Uh, yeah! I was actually just telling Zarya that, I can handle any runnin’ stuff, just for the love of god don’t make me do anything that involves leavin’ the ground.”

“Yay!” Hana jumped up and down. “I’m so glad, I was afraid I’d have to do it! I’m not really a coach, exactly, I’m finishing up my kinesiology and physical therapy master’s over at the university, and I’m good with the sprinters but I don’t know how to talk to the longer distance people.”

“So would this be a combined team, like they did with football?”

“Yeah! And because we’re probably not going to have a ton of crossover between our areas, we could hold practices at our separate schools and then have a joint one like once every week or two. That way we’re not travelling all the time.”

Jesse nodded. “I like it. What’s the timeline like, in terms of tryouts and the season?”

Lúcio pulled out his phone. “Let’s see...I was hoping to do tryouts in two weeks, Friday after school. The spring outdoor season starts officially in February.” He snapped his phone shut. “We pretty much missed the winter indoor season, but I figured we could just do some intra-school competition, just some fun races to get them warmed up before the big leagues.”

Jesse pulled out his own phone to flick through his calendar. “I don’t know about anything to help you guys, sorry, but there are some 5Ks that I was going to do myself that I could definitely bring the students to. A bit long for the middle distance kids, but a little distance conditioning never hurt anyone. I’ll likely be training them mostly the same anyways.”

Zarya had walked up while Jesse was talking. “It sounds like things are working out, da?”

Jesse turned and smiled. “Yeah, I think it will. I’ll work on coachin’ the middle- and long-distance runners for Blizzard and Overwatch combined.”

“Excellent!” Jesse nearly stumbled with the thump Zarya gave to his shoulder. “I will be in touch for a time we can all get together within the next week, before tryouts.”

Jesse weakly waved goodbye as she barrelled off to find another target. 

Lúcio grinned. “Zarya’s a lot, but no one cares more for the kids than her. She has such a good attitude with them.”

Hana was looking over where Reyes was arguing with a tall woman with short red hair. “ _ Some _ people could use a dose of positivity.”

Jesse snickered. “No, that’s just Reyes. He...he’s my boyfriend. I swear he’s not that pissy all the time.”

Hana clapped a hand over her mouth, “Oh my god, I’m sorry!”

“Nah, don’t worry. He’s an angry shell over a secretly gooey center. Speaking of which, I should probably see what’s up with him. Let’s keep in touch, yeah? Here, put your number in.” 

They spent a minute exchanging phone numbers and emails before waving goodbye. Jesse strolled over to Reyes, who had finally walked away from the woman after they had escalated to shouting and Zarya had separated them.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Ugh. Yes. That was goddamned Moira with her goddamned opinions on how much the kids can take.” Reyes was unconsciously clenching his fists, knuckles whitening.

“You two, uh, know each other, I take it?”

“We used to work together, she was the nurse for us before Angela, and she also did physical therapy and some assistant coaching work with the kids. She has all these crackpot theories on how to ‘maximize bodily potential’ and all that shit, but it ended up really injuring a couple of kids. I thought she should have been fired, but they shuffled her off to Talon so she could do her damage there.”

Jesse draped an arm around Reyes’s shoulders and walked him out of the auditorium. “Come on. It’s Friday night, we’re gonna have good Indian food, we have the whole weekend in front of us....stop thinkin’ about the angry red headed lady.”

Reyes sighed, shoulders visibly relaxing under Jesse’s arm. He tilted his head against Jesse’s shoulder. “You’re right. It’s been ten years, I should just ignore her, but she finds a way to crawl under my skin.”

They walked into the parking lot. “So…” Jesse started. “I, uh. Called you my boyfriend when I was talking to Lúcio and Hana. Is...is that okay?”

Reyes wrapped an arm around Jesse’s waist. “More than.” He gave him a quick kiss before making his way to the passenger side of the truck. “Now get in before my stomach starts eating my spine.”

Jesse pulled out his keys, biting his lip so he didn’t smile as hard as he wanted to. Boyfriend. It was a nice word to be able to use.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next morning, Reyes woke Jesse up with soft lips on the back of his neck. 

“You have approximately forever to stop doing that,” Jesse murmured, still half asleep and trying not to wake up too much.

“Did you have any plans today?” Reyes asked between nibbles. Jesse’s neck was starting to feel raw in a good way, like when a cat licked your arm too much.

“Not really. Was thinkin’ about a run in the afternoon, maybe some laundry. Why? Anythin’ in particular in mind?”

Reyes pulled Jesse’s shoulder until he lay on his back, propping up his chin on Jesse’s chest. “Remember how I mentioned way back that I went to a shooting range? Thought you might want to come with me.”

Jesse’s eyes blinked open wider as his brain came further online. “That’d be great, actually. I was just thinkin’ last night that if I ever want to get that shootin’ club off the ground, I need to get my own ass back into practice.”

Reyes smiled, and Jesse could feel it against his chest hair. “You have your stuff here? Figured we could eat, then go. I keep my stuff in a storage locker at the range.”

“I do, actually. Stay put, darlin’.” Jesse got up and padded naked to his closet, where he pulled down an ancient metal box with an angled lid. He fished a key out from his nightstand and unlocked it. Unwrapping several layers of what looked like ripped up sweatpants, he pulled out a battered leather wrapped object and handed it to Reyes, who sat up. Reyes raised his eyebrows at the weight of it, and carefully unwrapped it as Jesse sat next to him.

Revealed was an enormous, gorgeous gun. It had clean silver lines, wood at the handle, and… “Is that a goddamned spur on the butt?” asked Reyes with amusement.

“Hey, now. Don’t insult Peacekeeper. She was made by this legendary gunsmith, a hundred years ago. I have a whole provenance sheet somewhere in the box. She’s a six shooter, traditional double action so I can use single or double as I want. Uses .50 Action Express, though I’ve been arguing with myself for years to get it modified so it could take .44 Magnum to keep the cost down, but it’s such a finicky old gun that I’m afraid of damaging her.”

Reyes hefted it in one hand, surprised at the weight. “This is as heavy as my shotguns.”

“Yeah, but you don’t fire shotguns with one hand.”

Reyes shot Jesse a smirk. “You haven’t seen mine.”

“Okay, mystery man. Let’s eat and you can show me whatever you want.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Later that afternoon, Jesse was looking around himself in interest as Reyes led him into what looked like an abandoned airport hangar. He heard the faint sounds of firing that must come from an outdoor range somewhere on the property. They entered the building, turning left to an area marked “Check-In”. There was a very large man behind the counter, a scar covering a fogged eye and white hair and beard that in no way gave him an air of fragility. He saw Reyes and stood up, making Jesse realize that this was one of the largest men he had ever seen in real life.

“GABE!” came a German-accented bellow. “You have returned to my humble home!” Reyes vanished into a large hug before being carefully set down with a smile.

“Reinhardt, this is my boyfriend -”   _ no Jesse did not feel all warm and fuzzy at that, he was a grown man carrying a high caliber weapon _ “ - Jesse McCree, he works at the school with me. Jesse, Reinhardt Wilhelm, one of my old Marine buddies. He runs this place.” Jesse’s hand was enveloped for the second time in as many days by a calloused hand.

“Great to meet you,” he said, smiling a bit up at the man. “Gabe has spoken highly of this place.”

“Reinhardt, at your service! What can I do for you today?”

“We were hoping to do some shooting, maybe on the obstacle range if no one is using it?” Reyes said.

“Sure, no one has been there all day so it will be fresh for you.” Reinhardt handed a key to Reyes. “Go and get your things while I see what you man has brought for me.”

Reyes walked off, tossing a “Back in a sec,” over his shoulder. Jesse pulled out his duffle with Peacekeeper, a smaller handgun, and his ammo belt and moon clips. He undid the trigger lock and handed it to Reinhardt. “I have all my papers, and a CCP.”

“Were you in the service?”

“Yes, in a way. LEO with the National Park Service for years.”

“Ah, so that is why you need such a cannon. Bears and such.” The ‘cannon’ looked like a toy in Reinhardt’s hand.

“Yeah. Bears, razorback hogs, cougars, all of it. Then the human animals, drug runners and coyotes and such.”

“Truly a beautiful weapon. Perhaps even older than I am!” he said with a room-shaking laugh. “You have taken very good care of it. I suppose I will let you use my range,” a smile accompanying the last sentence.

Reyes had returned at this point, with his own duffle bag that clanked when he set it down. “We good to go?”

“Yes, unless you need any ammunition.” To Jesse: “You use clips instead of speedloaders?”

Jesse nodded. “I had to get them special made, ‘cause my cartridges are rebated rim. Everyone uses the ammo with a Desert Eagle so a speedloader works for them, but not so much for me.” 

Reinhardt nodded and tossed a set of keys to Reyes. “Be careful, as always.”

Reyes guided Jesse through a maze of corridors. “A man with unknown weapons is taking me down a dark, dank hallway in a place I’ve never been before. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this horror movie,” muttered Jesse.

“We’ve had sex and we’re not white, so obviously we’ll both die soon.”

“Eh, I’ve had a good life. Wish I could finish the track season, but still.”

Reyes unlocked the door to reveal an odd room. It was large with strange cuts that confused Jesse’s eyes in the flat lighting until Reyes flicked a switch and directional lights cast some shadows. It was a large open area, with blocks that jutted out into the room from all sides, providing targets at every angle. “This is amazing, I would have killed for a place like this in my training days,” Jesse breathed as his eyes darted from place to place. 

“It’s pretty great. You can have bullseyes, human or animal silhouettes, or my favorite,” Reyes flicked another switch, and red lights appeared on the blocks, appearing and disappearing with various speeds as Reyes twisted the switch. “The light target system is amazing for working on your reflexes, the local FBI and Marshals’ service come here just to use this place. It keeps track of your shots and everything.”

Both men took a minute to sling ammo belts around their waists. Jesse pulled out Peacekeeper and loaded her up, strapping a holster to his leg and putting her in before looking curiously at Reyes. He pulled out two black...things. They were vaguely shaped like sawed off shotguns, but with such ridiculously broad stocks that it was like having a piece of floorboard with a trigger grip.

“What in god’s name are those.” Jesse asked flatly.

Reyes’s mouth turned up at the corner as he continued to load them. “I told you, you haven’t seen anything like my shotguns. They’re like nothing else, anywhere. They’re experimental, from my Marine time, and the legality of them existing at all, let alone me having them is...iffy at best. If a lupara, an entry shotgun, and a combat shotgun all had a baby and increased accuracy and reduced weight, you’d end up with my Hellfires.” He handed one to Jesse.

It was light for its size, but still about as heavy as Peacekeeper. There was heavy silver scrolling at the top and wood around the trigger and grip, but most of it was matte black and deadly looking. On the side near the vents was etched RPNT. “Repent?” Jesse looked up at Reyes.

He rolled his eyes. “They had this whole thing, the name ‘Hellfire’ for the prototype combined with how we were always in black for missions, plus the skull symbols for the unit to begin with. We got called the Reapers, and they took it overboard. Good guns, though.”

Jesse cracked the breech and looked in. “Must be a bitch to reload.”

“You are goddamn telling me. Can’t tell you how many times I just wanted to pitch the damn things, but they were all ‘nooo, they’re expensive, we didn’t give you those guns just to toss them around like trash.’” His imitation whining was obviously much practiced. 

“So, cowboy.” Reyes tossed Jesse a clip, which he hung off of his belt. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Jesse loaded up Peacekeeper, checking her sights. He played with the switches on the wall until the bullseyes showed up. He took careful shots, getting back in the groove of things. Once he was hitting every center at every distance, he called back to Reyes, “Start up the light targets.”

The bullseyes retracted and Jesse walked to the center of the firing lanes. He took a deep breath with his eyes closed, and when a bell sounded he started to shoot. Light after light went out as he shot, emptied, and slammed in reloads. The lights sped up, but he was in a meditative trance. It was like running a complicated trail - his eyes and body reacted, and the rest of him was just along for the ride. The bell rang again signalling the end of the round, and Jesse came back to himself, covered in sweat and with an empty chamber. 

He turned to find Reyes staring at him with blown-open pupils and his mouth hanging slightly open. “I have never seen anyone shoot like that, even the best shooters in the world,” he said, walking over as Jesse holstered his gun. “That was the single hottest thing I have ever seen.”

Reyes caught his mouth in a kiss that had no business being anywhere outside of a bedroom. The shotgun shells hanging off of his belt clanked against Jesse’s belt buckle with an ugly sound, bringing both men back to themselves.

“Obviously I need to up my game at home, if that was the hottest thing you’ve ever seen,” Jesse whispered into Reyes’s mouth, sliding a quick tongue along the inside of his lips.

Reyes shrugged and stepped back, smoothing his jacket down. “What can I say? I’ve got a competency kink.”

“Me too, so show me your weird-ass guns.” Jesse gestured to them on the bench.

Reyes messed with the switches on the wall, until a new routine came up, something with circular targets swinging out on paddles. Reyes snapped a few more shells onto his belt, then shook out his neck and shoulders. He gestured for Jesse to hit the switch with a jerk of his head. 

The paddles were metal, and even with the caliber of Peacekeeper Jesse wasn’t sure if he’d be able to knock them back. Reyes cleared them one by one, each gun getting off two shots before needing reloaded, but what powerful shots they were. He had his method down, cracking the breech, holding it with the opposite arm, and reloading shells in seconds. Jesse was glad of his earplugs, the Hellfire guns sounding like they were indeed raining hell down on the range. 

Reyes fired one last shot as the bell rang, letting the gun rest on his shoulder as he turned to face Jesse. A thin trail of smoke wisped up into the air as he smirked. “Hit your kink at all?”

Jesse walked over and kissed him, barely able to taste anything other than cordite. “Let’s get home so I can bend you over something,” he breathed into Reyes’s mouth, before backing away and tossing spare shells into his duffle willy-nilly. 

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” They both cleaned their guns quickly, degreaser and swabs flying everywhere. Reyes trigger locked his guns and stripped his belt off, stuffing everything into the duffle and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Do we have to clean up the brass?” asked Jesse, looking at the ocean of casings Reyes had left behind. 

“Nah, he’s got people for that. Part of the service.” Reyes led them back through the maze of hallways to the main lobby, where Reinhardt waited. Reyes traded key rings with him, and went off to lock his stuff back up. 

Jesse leaned up against the counter. “Do we owe you anything?” 

“No no, not for Gabe or his friends. If you want to buy your ammo here, though, it would be appreciated. I have good prices.” 

Reinhardt and Jesse haggled for a bit, before settling on what they both felt was a fair price for several boxes. “We’ll be back sooner rather than later, I’m sure.”

Reinhardt waved a massive hand as they walked out. “It was good to meet you! Gabe, make sure to bring this one back soon!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rant on cinco de mayo stolen p much word for word from a former colleague. except if I included his whole rant it would have been another 500 words, no joke


	11. Chapter 11

Jesse sat crosslegged on the table next to the bleachers as he graded papers and listened to Reyes talk about STDs with half an ear. The lighting dimmed as Reyes turned out the lights and turned on his projector, shining it on the rolling whiteboard next to him. Jesse set his papers aside for the moment, unable to see in the gloom.

As the film on exactly what STDs could do to an unsuspecting body began to play, Reyes came over and leaned up against the table next to Jesse. “Here, I wanted to give you this.” He passed Jesse an STD test panel that looked like one of the mockup ones that Gabe had given out to the students earlier in the period, until Jesse noticed the name Reyes, Gabriel J, in the corner.  The panel was clean.

“I was there anyways to pick up the mock ones, just putting it out there if you wanted to get tested too…” Reyes trailed off. Jesse checked and rechecked to make sure all the students were staring at the screen in horrified fascination before pressing a quick kiss to the side of his mouth. “I’ll stop by and make an appointment.”

Jesse grinned. “I’m glad you didn’t mix this up with the blank ones, or else the students would have known a bit more about you than you’d want.”

Reyes’s mouth twitched. “I made very sure to put it in my back pocket and not touch it, believe me.”

Jesse found himself looking past Reyes to the screen as the class erupted in “ew!”s.

“What. What is that.”

Reyes turned. “Oh, yeah, they added a section to this one on parasites and intestinal worms. They can be transmitted sexually, too.”

Jesse resolved to take a long shower as soon as he could. Possibly with bleach.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A week later, Jesse slipped an envelope with his own clean test results in Reyes’s mailbox after their morning meeting, sniggering to himself as he did so. As he later sat eating lunch with Angela, Genji, Winston, and Satya, he watched Reyes check his mail out of the corner of his eye. Reyes walked over.

“Hi Gabriel, will you be joining us?” asked Satya.

“No, I’m stuck on lunch duty. Just stopping by to say hi.” He mock-glared at Jesse, switching to Spanish. <“Rude, kid. Now I’ve gotta go through the rest of the day thinking about that.”>

Jesse smiled up at him, staying in English and refusing to take the bait. “The day’s half gone already. You can deal.”

Reyes sighed, switching back to English himself. “No, remember, I have wrestling. Our first match against Talon is on Friday.”

Winston wrinkled his nose. “Is that horrible woman still helping out their teams? She’s going to seriously hurt someone someday.”

Reyes nodded with a frown. “That’s why we’re going to talk a lot about safety, and dealing with guys that unsafely cut weight so you end up against someone you really shouldn’t be against.”

Jesse leaned back in his chair. “I might stop by, see how you all are doin’.”

Reyes nodded and, preoccupied, leaned down to drop a kiss on Jesse’s forehead on his way out. Jesse sat back forward and promptly turned a color approximating the tomato on his sandwich as Satya, Angela, and Winston stared at him and Genji badly hid a smile behind a metal hand.

“So that’s why Fareeha suggested you two come over for dinner,” Angela said finally.

Jesse dropped his head into his hands. “It’s...we’re...yeah.”

“Good for you,” said Winston. “Now give me that banana if you’re not going to eat it.”

The table laughed, and happily moved on to other topics.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Okay, so now that you’re all weighed up, you know roughly what weight class you’ll be in on Friday. This might change, which we’ll talk about in just a second.” Reyes saw Jesse walking over as he talked to the group of boys seated on the mats at the side of the gym and paused, striding over to him and catching his arm.

“Could you do me a huge favor and help me out for a bit? I swear I’ll owe you one.”

Jesse looked at the other man suspiciously. “Help you how?”

“Just as a body, an example talking about weight class. And maybe just a move or two?”

“Gabe, I am in my school clothing. Which unlike yours, involves actual pants and a tie!”

“Please? You know kids learn best by example!” he said in a sing-song voice, parroting every pedagogy textbook ever.

Jesse sighed and let his bag fall to the floor. “Fine. But I will collect on this debt, believe me.”

Reyes turned back to the group. “Okay, gentlemen, Mr McCree has agreed to help us out today. He coached wrestling at his old school so he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Will we get to take him down?” came an excited voice from the back.

“I heard that, Roger. Your grade is nowhere near good enough to make those kind of threats,” Jesse said in an unimpressed tone, as the students laughed. In well-known irony, of course: Roger had one of the highest grades in his class.

“No, no, we’re going to be talking about weight class and cutting weight. And if anyone is taking Mr McCree down, it will be me.” Reyes said.

“Coach Reyes _thinks_ he could take me down,” Jesse corrected.

As the students oohed, Reyes elbowed Jesse in the ribs, asking in a low voice, “You got a tshirt on under there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Strip down to it.”

“This debt is stacking up, Reyes,” Jesse said as he undid his tie.

To his credit, Reyes took off his own hoodie so he was in a t-shirt as well.

“So here’s the situation. Mr. McCree and I both think we can take each other down. First let’s see if we’d be going up against each other. Mr. McCree, how much do you weigh?”

“‘Bout a buck ninety five.”

“And I’m about 190 myself. So where would the two of us be wrestling?”

Joey put up a hand. “The 195 class?”

“That’s right.” Reyes moved to stand next to Jesse. “Now take a look, think of us as models in a book, or paper dolls. Who do you think would have the advantage?”

Jesse felt oddly like he was under a microscope, as the students eyed them. “I feel like I’m at a dog show,” he said, prompting laughter.

Austin raised a hand. “Mr. McCree is broader and outweighs you by a little, but your arms and legs are longer.”

Ferris chimed in, “So it would depend on your style and your moves - do you need the advantage of bulk or reach.”

“Long story short y’all are calling me fat,” sighed Jesse.

“Shut up. It’s literally five pounds. And that’s actually a point I want to make - even though we have the differences we just talked about, Mr. McCree and I are relatively evenly matched, from a purely physical perspective, right?” The students nodded.

“Austin, stand up and come over here.” Eighteen years old, the kid was still growing and was already taller than both Reyes and McCree. “Now, what weight class did we just put you in?”

“182?”

“Correct. Now let’s say that there’s a match, let’s say next week. I decide to cut weight. I stop drinking water, reduce my salt, all that jazz. I drop from 190 to 181. Totally doable. Now all of you look at Austin, and look at me. Who is going to win?”

The group laughed, the beanpole Austin versus the muscled Reyes. “You might laugh, I get it. I’m,” he coughed delicately, “a decent amount older than him, I have adult muscle that I’ve maintained for years. I’ll wipe the floor with him. No offense, Austin.”

“Joey, stand up. Joey is at the 170 weight class. It wouldn’t be pretty and I’d be downright miserable, but if I dedicated myself I might be able to cut weight down to his class. Then I rehydrate, get that good sugar, carbs and protein into myself, gain the weight back, and I beat him down. This is a possibility when you wrestle. You don’t know who you’re going to be up against. Maybe you’ll be evenly matched,” he gestured at Jesse. “Or it’ll be someone a whole lot bigger and more cutthroat than you are,” he gestured at Joey then himself.

“What we’re going to try and do is have you work to deal with all possibilities, including underhanded dealing by the other team. So everyone, match up with someone either one weight class above or below you. We’re going to work on taking down larger targets.”

Jesse watched for awhile, then borrowed Reyes’s laptop to answer emails. He was deep in a message to Lúcio and Hana when he heard his name and looked up to see Reyes waving him over.

“Mr. McCree has generously volunteered to demonstrate the takedown that Austin and Joey were just struggling with.”

Jesse raised an eyebrow. “Did I, now?”

Reyes’s grin showed a canine. “You did.” Turning to the group, “So we just discussed how double leg takedowns can be done in a variety of ways, and it can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to get a pin. Now, Joey, take me through the steps again.” Joey dutifully recited what they would be doing.

Jesse and Reyes walked into the ring, quickly crouching down into position and circling each other. “Now remember, the goal is to go in under the arms at their waist, grab both legs, and flip.” Jesse assumed he would be given some warning, but instead Reyes came at him suddenly, slamming him to the floor. The students applauded.

Jesse took a breath, then wrapped arms and legs and pulled. Moments later, he was on top, with Reyes’s head caught in a chokehold, the students silent.

“Remember that every takedown can be countered. The best takedown for a double leg takedown, if you haven’t already avoided it by sprawling, is a guillotine chokehold. Wrap your pinned legs around your opponent’s, get a chokehold with their head towards the floor under your armpit, and flip. This is where abdominal strength and bulk will come in handy.” The students erupted in cheers, as Jesse let go of Reyes’s head.

Face ruddy, he looked up at Jesse ruefully. “I deserved that.”

“Yes you did.”

Jesse moved to get up, but Reyes clamped a hand on his wrist, minutely shaking his head with a badly hidden frantic look on his face. Jesse frowned and shifted again, suddenly stopping when he felt Reyes hard beneath him. Jesse leaned down, “Roll over, I’ll dismiss them.”

Jesse stood, flipping Reyes to his stomach in the process. “Okay, fellas. Dismissed for the night. Leave the mats, we’ll be usin’ them tomorrow.”

The students ambled out, talking amongst themselves as Reyes carefully got to his feet facing the back wall. Some adjustment and he gingerly turned around. “They gone?”

“Yeah.”

Reyes grabbed Jesse by the hand and pulled him the few feet to his office. He shoved Jesse inside, then shut the door behind him. Growling, he yanked Jesse into a hard kiss.

“You know I like it when you do stuff well, you can’t just do that to me.”

Jesse shoved his hands under Reyes’s shirt, feeling up the chest he had been sitting on top of a few minutes before. “You’re the one that made me do it, this is all your fault.”

Reyes leaned back against the desk, obviously hard in his sweatpants with shirt rucked up and hair in disarray. Looking at Jesse from under his eyelashes, he slowly spread his legs as he murmured, “Want to collect on that debt?”

Jesse turned and grabbed a poster of a kitten telling him to ‘hang in there’ and pulled it off the wall, slapping it over the window in the door. He strode forward a step and yanked down Reyes’s pants and underwear in one move, grabbing his cock in one hand and using the other to pull Reyes into a kiss.

“I’ve never actually fucked in school before,” he muttered as he tilted his head back. “You’re a bad influence on me.” Reyes was too busy kissing down Jesse’s neck and undoing his pants to respond. Jesse groaned when Reyes wrapped a hand around his cock, bending forward to watch their respective hands stroke one another.

Jesse made a noise of disappointment when Reyes let go of his cock and batted Jesse’s hands away from his own, shuffling with pants half-down to go behind his desk.

“Come on, darlin’, I can’t be that bad.” Jesse said, confused.

Reyes popped back up, waving a packet of lube in his hands. “Health teacher, remember? I am prepared for everything.” He tossed the lube to Jesse as he came around the desk and ground his ass back into Jesse’s groin before stepping forward and leaning down, arms on his desk.

“Jesus fucking christ.” Jesse slicked a finger and pressed it in, twisting it around for only a moment before pulling at Reyes’s shoulders. “C’mon, c’mon, wanna kiss you.” He bent Reyes’s head back more than was strictly comfortable in order to get to his lips, but was rewarded with a gasp into his mouth as Jesse pressed another finger in and hit the sweet spot with a crook of his fingers. Jesse hit it again and again, slipping in a third finger while Reyes was softly moaning out his approval.

“It’s enough babe, now get in me, been waiting half the day for this,” he groaned into Jesse’s ear.

Jesse slicked up his bare cock and pressed it in, Reyes falling forwards to brace his hands on the desk once more. Even though he knew less a millimeter of material was missing, it felt tighter, more intimate. He pushed in leisurely until Reyes growled something about not breaking and shoved himself back, seating Jesse as deep as he could go. Jesse widened his stance to give him leverage, braced one hand on the desk and one on Reyes’s hip, and started a fast, deep rhythm that left both of them panting.

Reyes was letting out small unconscious sounds at the bottom of every downstroke, thighs pressed against the front of the desk while hands clenched on the opposite edge. Jesse could feel the occasional contractions that meant Reyes was getting close. He leaned forward to wrap a hand around his twitching cock, stroking firmly with the movement of his hips. “I want you to never be able to sit here again without getting hard,” Jesse whispered into Reyes’s ear. Reyes collapsed forward onto his forearms as he came, white streaming across the dark wood. Jesse took Reyes’s hips in both hands, needing only a few more strokes to follow him over the edge. He spilled inside, feeling himself go everywhere instead of just into latex. Jesse collapsed forward himself, resting his head on Reyes’s sweat-soaked back.

“Well, I feel gross in a variety of ways,” Reyes remarked conversationally.

“What, getting barebacked on the desk where you talk to students isn’t what you always dreamed of?”

Reyes leaned back and caught Jesse’s lips in a kiss that was sweeter than it had any right to be. “I’m just thinking about how I’m going to clean my goddamn desk.”

Jesse pulled out, a trickle of come sliding down Reyes’s crack accompanied by him making a sound of disgust. Jesse scooped it up with a finger and pushed it back into Reyes’s hole. “This is what you wanted,” he murmured.

“Damn, kid, unless you want to start round two, stop saying shit like that.” Reyes pulled up his pants with a mild wince. He opened a desk drawer, and tossed Jesse a container of disinfecting wipes and a roll of paper towels. “Now help me make this place smell less like a whorehouse.”

After the room was clean - lube packet hidden away amongst other trash - they walked out into the gym to gather their things. As Reyes made to put on his hoodie, Jesse coughed delicately. “You, uh, might want to wrap that around your waist,” he gestured to the back of Reyes’s dark grey sweatpants, where there was now a distinct wet spot.

“Ugh. New rule: condoms at school.”

“How about new rule: no sex at school? Because this was awesome and hot and stressful and I kind of never want to do it again.”

Reyes slid an arm around Jesse’s waist. “Agreed. I just...with the kids around...yeah. Once was good, once was enough. Although I don’t know how I’ll ever sit at that desk and face Jack with a straight face ever again.”

“The one exception I might make would be if we could get into Morrison’s office.”

“I like the way you think.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse found himself outside Amari’s office on Friday during his plan. He knocked gently on her door frame, “I got the meeting invite? You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, yes, please come in. Shut the door.” She waved him in as she shut her laptop and pulled out a packet of papers. Jesse walked in like he was entering a tiger’s cage. Was this about him and Reyes? Did a student see them? Was he going to be fired and never work as a teacher again?

“I have an exciting opportunity for you, Jesse,” Amari said, and Jesse’s heart rose from where it had sank into his shoes.

“As you may or may not know, we have a tradition of various senior trips, service projects and internships that happen spring semester, many of them leading towards the students’ senior capstone projects. There is one that was always popular but fell out of practice as we haven’t had a Spanish teacher in some time - travelling to a Spanish-speaking country and doing community service. What Mr Morrison and I were considering this year is a cross-school trip, us and Blizzard High School, going to Puerto Rico and assisting there with the continued hurricane recovery. Most of our Spanish-speaking students happen to be from there as well, so it could give them a chance to see relatives.”

Jesse leaned back in thought. He had done something similar in high school - two weeks in Nicaragua with his AP Spanish class, though he had never participated as a teacher. He told this to Amari, who nodded. “This would be somewhat longer - a full month, the second week of April through the second week of May. It would only be seniors whom you think have a high enough speaking ability, who are also fully on track to graduate at the end of May. They’ll also be doing some work for other classes, which you would help facilitate - mostly just monitoring some time every day for them to work on their computers.”

“Who all would be going on this?” Jesse knew that he couldn’t request Reyes to come to Amari’s face, but if he could somehow work it…

“The primary teachers would be you and a teacher from Blizzard,” Amari checked her notes. “A Mr. Lúcio Correia dos Santos.”

“Oh!” Jesse said in surprise. “I know him, we’re working together with the BHS/OHS track and field teams.”

“That’s great, that you’re already acquainted. As a third chaperone you would also have a Ms. Mei-Ling Zhou. She is an environmental science teacher over at Blizzard, and has been working with the organization you’ll be assisting for some time now.”

“So how would it work, with my classes and all?”

“You’ll have a long-term substitute. It will be a fairly easy transition, we’ll have a long-term sub already covering Mr Reyes’s classes for the month or so beforehand as he is the testing coordinator and won’t be able to teach, so you can work with that person to acclimate them as to what you want them to do.”

Jesse had pulled out his phone, looking through his calendar. “Track and field will be over by then...I’m guessing the shooting club won’t happen this year?”

Amari shook her head. “I’d very much like it to, but you just won’t have the time, and neither will the students with the spring testing schedule. Now that we have the idea, though, you can come up with some ideas over the summer and we can hit the ground running with it in the fall.”

“Sounds good.” Jesse sat back. “Wow. This is...a really great opportunity. Thank you for letting me be a part of it.”

Amari waved off his gratitude with a bird-boned hand. “Don’t worry, this will be no vacation, you’ll be working your rear end off. There is, of course, a stipend you’ll get, and food and housing are covered. But I promise you, you’ll work for it.”

She stood, prompting Jesse to do the same, and held out a hand for Jesse to shake. “You’ve fit in well here at Overwatch, Mr McCree. I think this will be a good cap to a successful year for you.”

Jesse smiled and shook her hand, leaving after a few more thank yous. He shot a quick text off to Lúcio, asking him if he had heard anything from his principal about it. They’d see each other that evening anyways for a practice, but Jesse was excited.

He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he just about ran into Reyes, waiting outside his room. “Gabe, guess what! I’m takin’ seniors to Puerto Rico!”

“Slow down, what?” Reyes said with a half-smile, as Jesse unlocked his door.

“They do senior trips and projects and such, and there’s going to be a month-long one to Puerto Rico and I get to take the good Spanish kids, and Lúcio and some other teacher from Blizzard are going to be there, and we’re going to do community service and stuff!” It all came out in one breath, and Jesse found himself trying not to gasp in air.

“That’s right, they used to do that when we had...well, when we had an actual language department,” Reyes said thoughtfully, hoisting himself onto a table while Jesse gathered his things. “There’s also a trip that one of the science classes does where they end up in a forest for a few weeks and count trees and bugs and stuff. And then smaller trips, like to the amusement park for physics or the local paper for journalism.”

“It’ll be pretty much the month of April. Amari said that I’ll have a long term sub, the same one you’ll be havin’?”

Reyes nodded, leaning back on his hands. “I’m testing coordinator here, it’s not much of a thing in the fall but it really kicks into gear in the spring. I pretty much just stop teaching for a month, though if I can swing it I like to still hit each of my health classes at least once a week. The state tests, plus the various tracking tests and the state course tests and the SATs and ACTs… it’s a big job. I basically live and breathe it for a month.”

Jesse came up behind Reyes, resting his chin on his shoulder. “And then I’m gone. We’ll basically be long distance for two months.”

Reyes tilted his head, knocking his temple against Jesse’s. “And then one more month of school and then graduation, and then summer. The time will fly by before we know it.”

Jesse straightened and grabbed his bag. “There’s just so much to do, it’s months out and I’m already feelin’ the pressure.”

Sliding off the edge of the table, Reyes picked up his own duffle. “We’ll survive. You wanna go home, maybe pick something up for dinner?”

“I can’t. We have track practice, and then I think Lúcio and I are going to get together and talk about the trip.”

“Okay, maybe during the weekend, then.”

They didn’t manage to get together that weekend, because Reyes had an away match on Saturday and both of them were doing last-minute sub plans that administration decided they needed more of on Sunday. The next week flew by, with Jesse and Reyes at either track practice, wrestling practice, meets or matches. Out of nowhere, Jesse suddenly realized it was the first week of February. They’d been together officially for two months, and Valentine’s Day was coming up.

Oh, God.


	12. Chapter 12

“Genji. I’m goin’ to talk, and you’re not goin’ to make fun of me, okay?”

Genji gave Jesse a wary look over the lip of his glass. Jesse had dragged him out to some bar on the north side he’d never heard of, with explicit instructions to not invite Reyes. “You’re making it hard already, but go on.”

Jesse gulped down a too-large swallow of his beer and spent a moment coughing before looking at Genji and looking back down when he couldn’t maintain the eye contact. “So I don’t know much about your personal life, but you seem to be good at...stuff. Like clothing and the dances and...stuff.”

“I’m getting the feeling that the word you are avoiding is ‘romantic’. And the fact that it’s a week out from Valentine’s Day….?” Genji smiled into his next sip as Jesse turned pink.

“I haven’t been in a relationship in...some time. And my last one…” Jesse trailed off, suddenly remembering that he was talking to said last relationship’s _brother_.

Genji snorted something that was in the ballpark of a laugh. “Don’t worry, I know exactly how romantic my brother is.”

Jesse peeled at the label on his bottle. “I haven’t really been in an adult relationship that I cared about...romantically...durin’ Valentine’s Day, and it is stressin’ me the hell out. And we’re both guys! Like, manly guys. Even on our best days we don’t do the roses and candlelight thing, and I don’t know how big of a thing I should make of this because it’s only been a few months. Do we do gifts? We haven’t had holidays or birthdays yet so I haven’t even had to think about that -”

“Jesse, take a breath. You’re making me tired just listening to you.” Genji laid a surprisingly warm metal hand on Jesse’s arm, the muscle underneath hard with tension. “First off, do you actually want to do something special, or do you feel it’s just what you should be doing, because of the holiday? Or do you feel that it’s something Gabe is expecting of you?”

Tearing the label into small strips, Jesse frowned down at it. “I’ve never really given a shit about Valentine’s Day, personally. I think that the important dates are the ones that you make for yourselves, the anniversaries and such. And I just. I know a lot about Gabe, but not this. And people get weird about some holidays, you know? Like Christmas is big for me, but I don’t care much about Thanksgiving. An’ it’s opposite for some people. It’s an unknown. I don’t do well with those.”

“Then make a plan. Make it not an unknown. Or perhaps - god forbid - actually talk to the man? It doesn’t have to be a surprise.”

“Oh.” It sounded so stupidly simple, set out like that. “Yeah. I guess. We just haven’t been able to see a ton of each other lately, between our teams and the hell of spring semester.”

Genji looked at the ceiling in a silent plea for sanity. “And so you drag me out here to pick my brain on an actual free weekend night, instead of being with your boyfriend?”

Jesse pulled out his phone. “Let me just, uh, send a text.”

Jesse McCree (8:49 pm): hey u at home?

Gabriel Reyes (8:49 pm): Yeah, was gonna order some pizza. Come over?

Jesse McCree (8:50 pm): don’t order I can pick some up on the way. sausage and banana pepper ok?

Genji finished his drink and slid his card to the bartender. “I’ve got you. Go be with your boy, and ask him like an adult or I’ll do it for you in a much less polite manner.”

Jesse gave Genji a half hug, half headlock, and planted a loud kiss on the top of his head. “You’re the best, man.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Half an hour later, Jesse was balancing a pizza box in one hand and fiddling with Reyes’s lock with the other. Finally shoving the door open, he balanced the box on the entry table as he shed snow-covered boots and coat. He made his way to the living room to find Reyes slouched almost completely horizontally on his couch, watching something involving explosions with half-closed eyes.

“I didn’t realize it was a robo-laser-gunfight movie kind of week.”

Reyes stretched and shoved himself vertical. “Please tell me you got -”

“Enough red pepper flakes to choke a horse? Yes. They just gave us a whole dressing container full of them, instead of bothering to put them on this time. You really should just buy your own container, I’m sure it’s cheaper overall.”

“Oh I have a big container in the pantry. They just taste better from the pizza place. Saturated with grease or something.”

“Tasty.”

Jesse sat down on the couch, opening the pizza box onto the coffee table and taking a slice as he sat back.

Reyes inhaled one slice and took a few bites of his second before setting it down. “To answer your earlier question, yeah. It’s been that kind of week.”

Bumping a knee against Reyes, Jesse mumbled through a mouthful of cheese, “Tell me?”

“I’ve done this for a while, handling the teams and the union and the testing. But every year it gets harder. I thought it was me, you know, coming up on two decades in the system and not able to handle it anymore. But I asked around and I looked at my old files and it’s not me. The tests get more complicated. Everything is online and the state site or the district site or the special browser is going down, and there’s nothing we can do and time is wasted for us and for the students. I got into this for the teaching. I love it. I love this kids. But this? This shit kills me. And it’s only February. Next month is when I really lose it, because I don’t even have the kids.”

“I dunno what to say, Gabe. It’s a sucky situation that’s just not getting better. But...you’re not in it alone? Every testing coordinator in the district, in the state is going through the same shit. An’ you got support from admin and the staff. An’ me. You have me.”

Reyes looped an arm around Jesse’s shoulders, tugging him against his chest. “I know. It just gets easy to be swamped by the little shit. Have to remind myself to relax.”

Jesse took his time wiping grease from his fingers before flexing them and wrapping them around his thighs. “So, speaking of which. I was wondering if you had any plans for Valentine’s Day.”

“Well,” Reyes said thoughtfully, “I was thinking about asking out this one guy at school. Dunno if he’d be into it though -”

Jesse shoved an elbow into Reyes’s stomach. “Ass. You know what I mean.”

“Do that again and my pizza’s gonna come up to meet you again, ingrate. I was thinking maybe just a quiet dinner somewhere. It’s a school night, but it’d be nice to get out of the area.”

Jesse felt something in him relax. “Wanna pick somewhere out? You know that I don’t know around here that well. Just tell me how to dress.”

“Clown suit with a ball gag.”

“We’re talking about dinner, Gabe, not the afterparty.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Different schools had different cultures when it came to various holidays. For Valentine’s Day? Overwatch went nuts. The student council sold chocolate roses, actual roses, and both could be delivered with an optional song sung by one or more of the show choir members. The halls were filled with helium balloons and stuffed animals larger than any Jesse had seen outside of a carnival.

He was also glad he took the advice of his coworkers and planned a light day for his students, because he couldn’t get through ten minutes without being interrupted by a flower, candy, or song delivery. That was outside of the exchanging of gifts by couples and friends, and the inevitable fireworks when students found out exactly who was dating each other.

Jesse himself got a few nice cards from students, and a few inappropriate ones that were thankfully unsigned that he shoved in a drawer to show to Reyes later. He had his students making Spanish-language valentines, and was sucking on a heart-shaped lollipop during his last period when Felix strolled into his room, followed by several other students that Jesse had known were making the singing rounds.

Jesse exhaled in amused annoyance as Felix made a beeline for him. He’d had a few songs delivered to him throughout the day, the highlight so far of which was Hasselhoff’s “Hooked on a Feeling” courtesy of Genji. Felix stood in front of him with a wide grin, and Jesse grew suspicious.

“I’ve been asked to deliver this one personally, Mr. McCree.” He handed Jesse a bouquet of chocolate roses.

Jesse eyed him balefully. “Remember that right now you’re on my list to go on the Puerto Rico trip. That could change.”

“Don’t worry, I was told this was one of your favorites.” Felix smiled before starting: “Des..pa...cito…”

“Noooo…” Jesse moaned as the entire class gathered around, doing their best with their varying Spanish skills and a whole lot of enthusiasm. Felix was a native speaker, and was in the AP class mostly just for the expected five and college credit. His backing singers, Melvin and Dominic (having made up after their fight last semester), also could speak semi-fluently, certainly enough to get the whole song down. Jesse had a hand over his face to cover up both red cheeks and smile - unfortunately he knew the video would be floating around school in minutes.

The boys finished, bowing to applause from the room at large. Jesse crooked a finger to bring them over to his desk.

“I have ten bucks I’ll give you personally, if you could do me a favor. And not tell administration.” Felix cocked his head, wary but interested. “You boys know much reggaeton?”

Half an hour later Jesse was texted a video by one of his cross-country kids that had his number. It featured Gabriel Reyes, arms folded, foot tapping, and shoulders heaving in exaggerated sighs as the boys danced around him chanting, “A ella le gusta la gasolina! Dame mas gasolina!” He closed down his phone before his students could see what he was laughing at, not that he wasn’t sure they’d see the video soon enough.

The final bell rang and Jesse wandered through his room, trying to figure out which outlet the phone charger he’d lent Daisy had ultimately ended up in.

“You’re a dick.” Reyes was leaning in the doorway, crooked smile on his face.

“You started it.”

Reyes walked in the room. “I asked them to sing a sweet song,” Jesse snorted “about a beautiful, slow relationship. You had them sing filth.”

Jesse shrugged. “They knew the song already. And didn’t you know? It’s about fossil fuels. It’s right there in the title.” Reyes smothered his smile with a deep kiss.

“So I’ll pick you up at 5:30? Dress nicely.”

“I’ll pick out my best perfume. Will you be okay on time? Don’t you have practice?”

“Enough kids cancelled, assumedly to go out on dates, that I just cancelled the whole thing. No loss, we don’t have a match this week.”

“Okay, I’ve gotta go find Amari for a quick IEP meeting, but I’ll see you at 5:30.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reyes had been driving for a good half hour, reluctantly using Jesse’s truck as Jesse refused to wear a suit in the black panel van full of sports equipment.

“Are we going out of state for this?”

“Nah. It’s partly that this is a really good restaurant, and partly that I wanted to avoid seeing any students or parents. Not that I’m ashamed of you or anything, but…”

“Yeah. Awkward.”

They got to the restaurant, a small lodge-like building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by trees and a small parking lot with a dozen or so vehicles in it.

“I’m trusting that this is actually a restaurant, and not some cabin in the woods where you finally take me out,” said Jesse, a little uneasy at the isolation.

“No no, torture and killing comes after dinner.” Reyes opened the door to the restaurant, gesturing for Jesse to go in. Jesse got several steps inside before stopping and looking up. His way was blocked by a massively round man wearing some kind of mask. He reached for Jesse with one large hand...then kept reaching to clap Reyes on the back.

“Hey, man. Table over there?” The massive man nodded silently, and Reyes led them to a table by the window.

“What,” said Jesse flatly.

“So this is a weird little place. It’s run by Mako, the big Maori guy at the door who decided that Americans needed more tasting menus with weird shit on it. He’s...something, with Fawkes over in chem. Friends, I think? Maybe more. Fawkes is the one that first told me about this place. You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

“Uh, kiwi and papaya, but that’s it.”

“We’ll make sure to tell them. Here, look.” Reyes handed Jesse an odd one-page menu that consisted of drinks and little else. “They pretty much only do tasting menus here, and the only options are pretty much vegetarian or not. They won’t bring you anything you’re allergic to or if you have a really strong aversion to it, but otherwise you just kind of get what Mako decides to make.”

“Sounds risky.”

“It is, and maybe you don’t love everything, but it’s all really well done and unusual. I hate asparagus, for instance, unless they make it here.”

A waiter came and they ordered drinks and a tasting menu each. Jesse was sipping at the stupidly high ABV local cider he’d ordered and trying to decide if he liked it or not when he heard a cheerful voice say, “Hi Mr McCree! Hi Coach Reyes!”

Jesse closed his eyes for a moment in consternation as Reyes said evenly, “Hi Roger, hello Ms. Camphorn, good to see you again.”

Roger’s mother smiled and greeted them. “Sorry Roger interrupted you. We’re here for dinner, too.” Roger threw a cheerful arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Dad always took mom out for Valentine’s dinner but now that he’s gone I’m holding up the tradition.”

Jesse smiled softly. “That’s a real nice thing to do for your mom, Roger.”

Roger of course then ruined the moment by peering at Jesse’s glass. “Whatcha drinking there, Mr. McCree? Coach was just telling us about the dangers of alcohol, wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”

Jesse, having unfortunately heard the stories about Roger himself after homecoming and knowing the exact level of his bullshit, pulled his glass away. “Apple juice,” he said flatly.

“I don’t think you’re being truthful, Mr McCree. Looks tasty though.”

“Very old apple juice. You wouldn’t like it.”

Roger grinned, “Okey dokey. See you tomorrow Coach, Mr McCree.” He and his mother walked off to their own table on the other side of the restaurant.

“Apple juice?” asked Reyes with amusement.

Jesse took a sip. “Well, it was at one point. Quite some time ago.” He ran a finger around the rim of the glass. It was one thing to run into students at a coffee shop or restaurant during the normal course of things - he’d seen Jillian and Rosa while he was out eating with Lúcio after a meet just last week. But this was Valentine’s Day, and kids talked.

“Should- should we worry? Roger’s a good kid, but kids are kids…” Jesse asked in a low voice.

Reyes shrugged. “I said before, I’m not ashamed of you, Jesse. I’ve been out at work my entire career, and there are other staff in relationships at the school. Not to mention, we’re not the most subtle people in the world. I’m pretty sure we’re the worst-kept secret at OHS.”

Jesse nodded. “Yeah. I...I’m not ashamed of you either. At all. I’m just not used to it bein’...so okay. I was out at work before, but it was one thing to be gay, it was another to actually bring your partner to things, and I couldn’t imagine them being all right with dating another gay staff member. You could be gay, you just couldn’t -”

“Act it?” At Jesse’s nod, Reyes sighed and reached out to still Jesse’s finger on the glass, pulling his hand down to the table and holding it. “This is here. Not your old school.”

Jesse’s mouth turned up involuntarily in a smile, and he sipped his drink and held his boyfriend’s hand and stopped worrying for a night.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse bounced on his heels as bright lights shone overhead. Yesterday’s track meet had been cancelled due to rain, so they were doing a Saturday night meet. Everything felt surreal, the stadium lights against the pitch black night giving everything an unearthly light. Reyes was somewhere in the stands with Oxton, unfortunately not having been allowed onto the field. This was their most important meet thus far - determining who would go on to districts, the first step before regionals and states.

The quiet sound of wheels on polyurethane meant Lúcio had come up next to him. Jesse had been nonplussed at his use of rollerblades to zip around the track, until he realized how fast the guy could get from group to group. The rollerblades, the never-ending music from the speakers hanging from his belt, the unrelenting positivity - all part of how Lúcio got through life. Jesse had found himself becoming fond of the younger man, though he could only take him for the duration of a meet or practice and maybe a meal before he felt exhausted in the face of such enthusiasm. Their Puerto Rico trip was going to be...interesting.

“You’re making me nervous, and that takes a lot, bro. You okay?” Lúcio asked, over the sound of crowd and competitors.

Jesse consciously tried to still his legs. “Yeah, I just hate the anticipation.”

Lúcio clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Don’t worry. They got this. Just send out the positive vibes!”

Jesse rolled his eyes, but smiled all the same. They watched as Brian and JD made their way to their starting blocks, shaking out their legs. They were down to the last two events: the boys’ 5000 meter and the boys’ 4x400 meter relay. Jesse had agonized over how to order his runners - all his best middle distance kids were also his best relay runners, but he wanted to make sure they weren’t back to back. He wanted to put Brian in the relay, but he was too good of a long-distance runner to waste him when he had enough for a relatively strong relay team.

Lúcio’s hand tightened on his shoulder for a second, the starting pistol fired, and the runners were off, Lúcio and Jesse cheering for all they were worth. Jesse quieted soon, watching his boys carefully. JD always made him nervous - despite being an excellent runner, he also had asthma that was currently making his life hell with all the pollen in the air. Last night’s rain had damped it all down, so he was going strong. Jesse had forced the two of them to do a 5K sponsored by the local zoo with him the week before, and they’d come at the top of their age group.

The minutes passed by quickly, each lap eaten up by the pounding of sneakers. As the twelfth lap ended, the runners separated out of their pack to give everything to that final half lap. Jesse lost sight of who was where, sweat-soaked uniforms blending into each other at a distance. The cluster crossed the finish line, and Jesse and Lúcio clutched at each others’ sleeves as they waited for the announcer. A minute later they were yelling their heads off as JD and Brian came in second and fourth, respectively. They ran over to them, grabbing them up in hugs. As much as they wanted the celebration to continue, the relay was about to start.

It was almost an anti-climax. It was nearly the same group as his cross-country team - Roger, Austin, Dean, and a boy from Blizzard named Eli. Relays were always less stressful - if one person had a bad time, there were three others to try and pick up the slack. It didn’t stop Jesse from his usual anxiety, of course, but this was a familiar nervousness with this group that he’d dealt with last semester. The pistol went off and the laps flew by, slaps of batons into hands echoing far more than they should have in such a large space. As a sprint race it really should have been Hana’s area, but Jesse knew relays - it was as much teamwork as running, and he knew how to get the best teamwork out of his boys.

Jesse watched as Roger’s long legs ate up the last leg, arms pumping and head down. “Come on, come on,” he chanted to himself, barely realizing it. Lúcio was pounding on his arm as they rounded the last corner, Roger putting on a burst of speed at the end to take their team into a very respectable third place. Jesse and the whole watching team leapt up, cheering. Lúcio in his excitement actually jumped up onto Jesse’s back, who ran around the team with him on a piggyback ride. They were going to districts, with a group of eight different students from their team making third or higher in their events.

Jesse heard the creak of a gate and gently dropped Lúcio so he could run over to where Reyes and Oxton were making their way onto the field, grabbing Reyes up in a hug. “Districts, Gabe! Districts!” Reyes hugged Jesse tightly, almost too tightly for a second. As Jesse pulled back he saw something...odd in Reyes’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, before JD bellowing his name made his head turn.

“I’ll be right back, we just gotta get a picture with the trophy. Stay right here,” Jesse said, before jogging over to the team. He got the team into a general clump where everyone’s face could be seen, before slinging one arm around Hana’s shoulders and one around Lúcio’s and smiling hard enough to make his face hurt.

Later that night, Jesse lay stretched out on his couch, half draped over Reyes who was running absent fingers through his hair as they mostly ignored the cooking competition episode that was playing quietly on the TV.

“Thanks for comin’ out tonight, I know you’re bein’ run ragged,” Jesse said, turning his face up towards Reyes. It was the end of the second week of March, the first full week of state testing and Reyes was living and breathing paperwork.

“It was good for me, I don’t even remember the last time I did something for fun at this point. Two more weeks and we’re done with the worst of it.”

Jesse sighed, his breath stirring the hair on Reyes’s chest. “And then I’m gone. For a month. I’ve been lookin’ forward to the trip, but now that it’s actually happening I just want to stay home.”

“What’s not to look forward to? You get to go overseas, do worthwhile work, not have to do formal classroom teaching, hang out with friends…”

Jesse snorted. “‘Friends’ is a strong word. I’ve only talked to Mei through e-mails, and Lúcio is...Lúcio.”

Reyes’s fingers tightened almost painfully for a second, soft apology on his lips at the sound Jesse made, fingers soothing over his scalp. “You guys seem to get along well, to be friends.”

“I guess, on teams at least. He’s a nice guy. But he’s just so...energetic all the time. Maybe I’m just old, but I can’t handle that for more than a few hours at a time, and we’re going to be in each others’ business for a month. I don’t like being trapped with people like that, when you can’t get away and be alone.” A small, sardonic smile crossed Jesse’s lips. “Despite my cheerful ways, I don’t actually like being surrounded by people all the time. I’m good at it, but doesn’t mean it’s my thing.”

A rumble of laughter under Jesse’s ear. “Who are you talking to, kid? King of the introverts, here, disguised as grumpiness.” Reyes paused before continuing, contemplative tone in his voice. “I think that’s why I like teams. Coaching. Organizations like that. Because I get to talk to people, spend time with them, and then the practice or the match is over and I get to leave them. There’s an automatic protocol, and that’s...reassuring.”

Jesse pushed himself up a little, until he could catch Reyes’s mouth in a lazy kiss. “ ‘m just glad that I’m who you come home to when you leave them.” Reyes smiled into the kiss, before tightening his arm around Jesse’s waist and relaxing back into the couch and closing his eyes in contentment.


	13. Chapter 13

“Sunscreen, sunscreen…the fuck did my sunscreen go.” Jesse’s apartment looked like a bomb had gone off, clothing and little bits of everything scattered across his bedroom and spilling over into the living room. A hand appeared in front of Jesse’s face, dangling a bag with several bottles of sunscreen in it. 

“It was right where you left it on the table, five minutes ago,” said Reyes, amusement coloring his voice. 

“Stop mocking my pain.”

“I’m not mocking your pain, I’m mocking your lack of organization. Haven’t you ever taken a long trip before?”

“Yeah, but not with my stuff packed away in this particular apartment, and I can’t remember where I put it when I unpacked back in July.” Jesse bent back, his spine popping with a worrying sound. Reyes frowned, and wrapped hands around Jesse’s shoulders, walking him back to the couch and pushing him down. 

“Take a nap. I’ll take the list,” he waved the paper that had everything Jesse was planning to bring, “and check off what’s already packed so we know what we have to track down.” Jesse opened his mouth to protest, but Reyes crossed his arms and put his Coach Reyes voice on. “Stay.”

Jesse annoyedly fluffed a pillow and slouched into a prone position, aware of how childish he was being in the face of Reyes’s support. He hated travelling, having done so much of it during his park service days that he got thoroughly burnt out on the concept. He spent years virtually living out of suitcases - at one point he didn’t even have an apartment, just a storage unit and a guaranteed spare room at his tía’s during downtime. They were leaving the day after tomorrow, and he hadn’t been sleeping. Childish as it might be, he did need the nap. He wrapped his arms around a pillow, and reluctantly drifted off to the sounds of Reyes quietly muttering to himself and moving items around.

Jesse awoke, with that odd feeling where he couldn’t tell what time it was. Something smelled good, and he got up and followed his nose to the kitchen. Reyes was stirring a pot on the stove, and Jesse wrapped his arms around him from behind. “Whatcha makin’?”

“I’m calling it cleaning-out-your-fridge stew. Figured we should try and use up your perishables instead of pitching them, you can freeze this so the extra won’t go to waste.”

Jesse smiled into the back of Reyes’s neck. “I knew I kept you around for a reason.” 

“Go make yourself useful and try to make a salad out of what’s left of your vegetable drawer. I don’t remember what I didn’t use, but I know there’s lettuce at least.” 

Jesse rooted around in the fridge. “You’re still okay with -?”

Reyes cut him off, “With stopping by to water all your dumb little plants? Yes.” Jesse had plants everywhere in his apartment, many that he had picked up here and there with the Park Service. Most were cactuses, though, or random plants carted from New Mexico that made the place seem like home. Jesse had made a whole spreadsheet of what got watered when, and hung it from a thorny branch of his prickly poppy.

They moved around the kitchen, cooking and cleaning in quiet harmony. _ I could get used to this,  _ Jesse thought _. I should think about what to do when my lease is up. _

After dinner, Jesse went into his bedroom to find everything had been cleaned up, his bags neatly packed with military efficiency. “Gabe!” he called back. “You didn’t have to do all of this.”

Reyes shrugged, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m done with my stress for the year. You’re in the middle of it, between track and the trip. You needed a break.”

Jesse’s team had made it to states, a long-jumper from Blizzard and Jesse’s relay team taking medals. It had been a whirlwind of anxiety, with the various competitions taking up the weekends, normal class and meetings during the week, and planning for the trip trying to fit into the edges. Jesse had prepared his substitute as best he could but...the guy didn’t actually speak Spanish. He’d asked if he could have someone who was at all qualified in his area, or even just spoke the language at all, but no luck. His state test had already happened - it was  _ a  _ state test, but not one of  _ the _ major needed-for-graduation tests. Yes it was confusing. In any event, it meant that even if his kids learned nothing in the next month it at least wouldn’t affect his scores and evaluations. A cynical thought, but a comfort.

“You should double check, make sure it’s all what you want, but I just followed down the list,” Gabe said, handing said list back to Jesse. He shoved it on a shelf, already forgotten. 

“I trust you,” Jesse said simply. He hooked a finger in a belt loop and tugged Reyes backwards toward the bed. “Now that we have some free time…” The sentence ended in a grunt as Reyes pushed him down onto the bed, following with his own body a moment later. 

Jesse was pressed down into the fluffy comforter, suffocated in the best way between mattress and warm muscled body. For a moment he just lay there, not moving, not even responding to the lips on his jawline, trying to freeze the moment in his memory. 

He caught Reyes’s face between his hands, pushing him back just far enough to look him in the eyes. 

“I love you,” he whispered into the quiet of the house. Reyes closed his eyes, the small smile the Jesse liked to think was just for him pulling at his lips, and he pressed his forehead to Jesse’s. 

“I love you, too,” Reyes said just as quietly, and they held each other knowing it would be the last time they could do so for weeks.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse lay on the cot in a pool of sweat. He was fairly sure that he had been born in sweat, he had lived in sweat, and now he was going to die, covered in liquid. He grabbed at a towel on the floor and ineffectually wiped his face. He knew that Puerto Rico would be hot - he was well used to heat, having lived so long in the Southwest. He’d spent time in tropical areas, too, understood humidity. But this, this was on another level. They had arrived just in time for the rainy season, and the humidity meant that you were never ever truly dry.

They were originally supposed to go to Yabucoa, to assist with the hurricane relief efforts. Their plans changed, though, when Fareeha contacted Jesse and an old colleague contacted Mei: there was a landslide near Lajas, in the southeast. Fareeha would be there with Médecins Sans Frontières; having been stationed for the last few weeks in the Dominican Republic she was on the closest mission team. Mei’s old colleague, Dr John Frazier, had known she was coming to the island and though that Lajas could be just as interesting for her.

Jesse’s biggest concern had been that they not be seen as white saviors, swooping in to help the uncivilized with their reconstruction. Granted, literally the only actual white person in their group was Shae Landford, but the concern still stood. Happily, they were made very real use of. They split their days into thirds, with either Jesse, Mei, or Lúcio taking a group of students and rotating areas. Part of their time was spent helping haul mud and trees, cut timber, and do reconstructive work on the roads the landslide took out. Then they would go to the local school, and their high school students helped either repair the school or tutor the younger children. Finally, the high schoolers were taught themselves, learning all their usual subjects but with their current context: the history of Puerto Rico, the effects of colonization, the ecology of their area. 

Long story short, they were tired. All the time. 

Unable to sleep, Jesse pulled out his phone. He didn’t use it much - reception was spotty and the data usage was huge due to where they were. He flipped through apps, seeing what friends and colleagues back in the real world were doing. He ended up, as often happened, on Reyes’s instagram page. It wasn’t often updated, but they were still little glimpses into a private man’s life, one Jesse was finally part of. He had shown up in several images over the past few months, though never really as a whole person, just as details. A gun-oil covered hand resting on Peacekeeper, a tiny frog balanced on Jesse’s hairy leg, a dark silhouette leaning against his truck, backlit by stadium lights. The only new image today was a rare picture of food: a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches that Jesse recognized as coming from their local diner, Genji’s recognizable hand giving a thumbs up in the background as the caption read “happy national grilled cheese day I guess”. Jesse’s chest hurt for a moment. He liked his solitude, but wasn’t accustomed to this feeling of loneliness.

Jesse McCree (1:21 am): national grilled cheese day?

Gabriel Reyes (1:22 am): Swear to god. They were on sale at the diner, just couldn’t help myself. Ate enough of them that the sale didn’t matter hah

Jesse McCree (1:23 am): pretty sure i would give my left arm to be there with you eating grilled cheese

Gabriel Reyes (1:24 am): Arms are important, you need both of yours. You okay?

Jesse McCree (1:24 am): yeah just tired. and sweaty. so so so sweaty.

Gabriel Reyes (1:25 am): One week down, three to go. it’s not that bad, is it? Really?

Jesse McCree (1:27 am): nah, mostly just not used to it yet. thank god for fareeha keepin me sane. dunno how she and angela do it being apart all the time. i miss you already

Gabriel Reyes (1:28 am): --picture message, Reyes’s hand with a glass of some kind of alcohol, on his couch with the TV on in the background--

Gabriel Reyes (1:28 am): This would be nicer with you here

Jesse McCree (1:29 am): hah yeah i’d take a pic but it’s dark and the flash would wake lúcio probs

Gabriel Reyes (1:34 am): You guys are sharing a room?

Jesse McCree (1:34 am): yeah mei was supposed to be here too actually but bc shae and rosa are the only girls here shes w them

Gabriel Reyes (1:35 am): It’s getting late, kid. Get some sleep.

Jesse McCree (1:36 am): you too darlin xxx

-x-x-x-x-x-

Almost two weeks later, Jesse had settled into the groove of things. They were all still tired, but they were getting real work done - the main road had been completely cleared and shored up, and now they were working on some of the smaller roads and houses that had been in the path of the wall of earth and water. Jesse was walking back along one of the more cluttered paths when he put his leg into a hole that had been disguised by a clump of leaves. He tripped and fell, catching himself with his arms. A bright glass-shatter shock went up Jesse’s left arm, and he sat down heavily. Jesse closed his eyes for a moment before looking at his arm, and then closed them again trying to keep his stomach down. His hand was...not facing where it should be. 

He very carefully got to his feet, blessing every run he had ever been on that gave him strong legs so he didn’t have to use his arms. Jesse felt a trickle and looked down to see a section of branch sticking out of his right calf. Delightful. Well, it would just have to stay there, because he was using one arm to keep the other immobilized. He continued his trudge to the school, running through a litany of curse words in multiple languages under his breath.

As Jesse pushed open the door to the school, Mei looked up in confusion then alarm, her large eyes opening even wider. “Jesse! What happened!?”

He let her guide him to a chair. “I tripped. Fell. Hurt my wrist.”

“And your leg. I’m just going to...leave that for a minute. Let me call Fareeha, she’ll get one of the doctors in.”

Jesse sat very carefully still, the throbbing in his wrist matching the throbbing behind his eyes. It felt like just a second later when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Jesse?” He blinked to see Fareeha’s clear brown eyes, strong brows pulled down in worry. “I have Dr. Perkins from our MSF team. She’s going to take a look at you, okay?”

Dr Perkins was revealed to be a perky blonde woman who didn’t seem old enough to be a doctor, let alone with MSF, but her hands were quick and competent. She started with Jesse’s leg, pulling the branch stub out and cleaning the bits of bark out of the wound with a ruthless efficiency while Jesse gritted his teeth. Two stitches and a bandage later, and he was set. 

“We’re going to get you over to our outpost, a mile down the road, so we can get some x-rays. You’re definitely broken, but we need to see how much.” She handed Fareeha two white pills and a cup of water. “Get him to take these, and then try and keep him upright.”

Jesse was subjected to the indignity of Fareeha feeding him the pills and water, but he couldn’t let go of his arm to do it himself. They walked down the hallway, Fareeha gently correcting his course when he started to veer into walls, the pills and adrenaline crash taking effect. They got into a Jeep, and Jesse clenched his jaw hard enough to hear the creaking as they bounced along the rough road. He was hustled into the outpost - not much more than a clean shack with medical equipment - and an x-ray machine in short order. 

“Congratulations!” Dr Perkins told him. “You are the proud new owner of a Smith’s fracture, aka you broke the end of your radius, the shorter big bone in your arm. Good news is that it’s clean - no surgery or anything, just a cast.”

Jesse remembered little after they shoved another pill in his mouth before setting his arm. He did insist on a black cast, cloudily thinking of Reyes for no particular reason. He didn’t fall asleep, but was pretty much a walking puppet as Fareeha took him back to their home base and sleeping quarters. She turned him over to Lúcio, who got him to eat something and put him to bed.

Jesse woke up the next day, confused. His alarm didn’t go off and it was obviously far later in the day than when he normally got up. He put out an arm to get up and grunted in pain - oh, that was right. Broken wrist. He gingerly sat up, and Lúcio bustled in carrying a tray of food, a bottle of medication, and water. “Oh good, you’re up!”

“What time is it?” Jesse asked muzzily, aware of how disgusting his mouth was after not having brushed his teeth the night before. 

“Around noon. You got a good 18 hours of sleep in, buddy.” Lúcio handed him a pill. “It’s just Tylenol 3, it won’t knock you out like the stuff from yesterday.” Jesse swallowed it down gratefully, before grabbing the bowl of asopao and shoving the rice and chicken into his mouth, his stomach having decided to wake up as well. 

“Slow down, man, you’re not going anywhere for awhile.”

Jesse paused in his eating enough to ask, “How...is this going to work?” They only had three chaperones, they couldn’t be down one.

Lúcio shrugged. “Mei and I talked, and we’ll just have the kids rotate instead of us. I’ll stick with the rebuilding, Mei will help with tutoring, and you’ll do the straight teaching. It’ll get you off of your feet, and maybe the kids will feel guilty enough that they’ll actually get those damn papers done.” One of the requirements of the trip was that each student incorporate it into their capstone, their big project for senior year. It wasn’t due until closer to graduation, but the teachers were making the students write a substantial essay on their experience that would be due at the end of the trip.

“You’re not going to do anything today, though. Fareeha and the MSF people are giving the kids a talk on the work they do, Mei’s with them now,” Lúcio said, folding his legs up under him on his own bed.

Jesse set his empty bowl aside, and leaned back, thunking his head against the wall. “I feel fucking useless.” His head, leg, and arm were all throbbing, and it wasn’t the kind of pain that the Tylenol could touch. He was also ready to take another nap, which was ridiculous after having slept for 18 hours.

Lúcio shrugged again. “Every time I’ve ever broken something I get totally wiped out, I think it’s just your body trying to devote all its energy to fixing you up. Don’t worry, man. We’re ahead on construction, we’ve got lots of support here, you can afford to take a few days to heal.”

Jesse grumbled, but gave in to his impulses and lay back down in bed. Lúcio turned out the lights and set a bottle of water on the floor next to him before leaving.

He ended up sleeping straight through ‘til the next morning. Jesse got up, having to embarrassingly have Lúcio help him get his arm wrapped in trash bags so he could shower. He felt immeasurably better afterwards, even teaching the kids about Taíno mythology for most of the afternoon. 

Jesse pulled out his phone, and started a text message, before closing the window and calling Reyes. 

“Hey there,” came the warm voice down the line. “How’re you doing?”

Jesse sighed, already feeling better. “Not great. I might have taken a slight fall.”

Chuckles from Reyes. “You? Master of grace? Color me shocked.”

“Yeah, except I went into a hole and caught myself, and now I have stitches in my leg and a broken wrist.”

Amusement flipped to concern in a moment. “Jesus, Jesse, are you okay? Do they have the facilities there to deal with it?”

“I got really lucky, actually, because Fareeha and her group are still here, so they stitched me up and slapped a cast on me real quick. It happened yesterday, actually, but I’ve been sleeping pretty constantly since then.” Jesse said.

“Are they keeping you under observation or anything?”

“God, no, it’s just a broken wrist, same as every ten year old gets. Lúcio’s been takin’ care of me, and that’s more than enough.”

“Hmph. Lúcio.” The derision in Reyes’s voice was clear.

“...What do you mean by that?”

“By what.”

“By sayin’ his name like it’s a curse. He’s been nothin’ but great this whole time.”

“I’m aware. He is half of what you talk about.”

Jesse’s chest hurt. “What...Gabe, are you jealous? Lúcio is a colleague and friend, that’s it.”

“A colleague. Who I’ve seen touch you more than anyone but me,” Reyes’s voice was sharp, edged in a way Jesse had never heard before.

“Wha…” Jesse stopped, as Lúcio himself came in, dropping off some papers. 

“Here you go, buddy, essays from Rosa, Felix, and Melvin. Have fun!”

“Jesus Christ, he’s there now?” Reyes bit out.

“What the fuck, okay, calm down.” Jesse said into the phone, as Lúcio took one look at his face and made a strategic retreat. “He just came in to drop off some student essays, because, you know, we’re actually fuckin’ professionals who are here to do our goddamn jobs, not whatever you think is going on.”

He continued, the pain in his arm giving him a head of steam. “An’ what do you mean, touching me? We hug when our kids win, and that’s it. What, you want to yell at me next for huggin’ Sombra? Or Genji?”

“You don’t talk about Sombra or Genji the way you talk about him.”

“I...I don’t talk about him! I mean, we coached together and we had to plan this damn thing and now we’re here together and the only adults I have to talk to are him, Mei and Fareeha, so yeah, I guess I do talk about him. But that’s it. Jesus, do you think I’ve been fuckin’ him on the side? Do you really think that little of me?”

Silence on the other end.

“Are you goddamn serious. What the hell, Reyes.”

“No, I don’t think you’re...I just…” Reyes stopped and started, sounding as frustrated as Jesse had ever heard him.

Jesse cut him off. “My arm hurts, I’m not havin’ this discussion with you right now.” He stabbed at his phone screen, vaguely missing the days where he could snap the phone shut or slam down a landline. 

They’d never really fought before. They’d had small arguments, little tiffs that blew over with some sleep or makeup sex. This was...something else. Jesse set the essays to the side and even though it was early evening, he took a Tylenol and went to sleep, head throbbing the whole time.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Have you taken any pain pills today?”

It was several days later, and Jesse looked up from the pile of papers he was going through to see Fareeha standing over him, arms crossed. “No…?”

“Good. Come with me.” He found himself hauled up by his good arm. Fareeha led him to one of the jeeps that littered the area, keys left in the ignition. He held on to the bar of the open roof as they jolted through jungle to the little town close to the water where they did their supply runs. They got out, and Jesse followed Fareeha to the small, open air bar.

They got a shot and a beer each, and Fareeha waited for Jesse to down his shot before asking bluntly, “Why are you being such an asshole?”

Jesse stared at her for a second, before grabbing her shot and drinking it as well. “So what, you lost the rock-paper-scissors game to talk to me?” he grumbled.

Fareeha delicately sipped her beer. “Mei is the most non-confrontational person I’ve ever met and you’ve been an inch from biting Lúcio’s head off for days, so here I am.”

Jesse turned his bottle around in his hands, fingers picking at the unfamiliar label. “How...how do you do it? You and Angela, I mean.”

Fareeha looked surprised, then understanding, taking a moment before answering. “For better or worse, being apart has been our life together for...most of it. We’ve been together seven years now, though we were friends for many years longer. Our whole relationship I’ve been with MSF and she has been the nurse at Overwatch, so we’ve never had what equates to normal, traditional time together. It’s what we’re used to. Though it doesn’t make it easier.” She rested her chin on a long-fingered hand. “We talk, a lot. We’re honest. We’re not always pleasant to each other, but we know that it’s because we have high stress jobs and it will pass.”

Jesse was quiet, thinking about seven years of being on trips like this, of going all over the world, of being apart from Reyes for most of the year. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“Let me guess,” Fareeha said gently, breaking into his thoughts. “Gabe?”

Jesse stopped picking at the label, meeting her eyes. “We had a fight, on the phone. Our first real fight. And between that, and this,” he waved his broken wrist in the air, “and being here and without my usual support system...I’m not dealing well. 

“How long have you been together? Not long, if this is your first year here.”

Jesse gave an awkward, short laugh. “When you and I first met, New Year’s Day? That was when we’d first got together.”

Fareeha’s musical laugh filled the air. “Oh, Jesse. Was that your morning after? Were mother and I your walk of shame?” 

Jesse could feel his face reddening. “Yeah, yeah, laugh at my pain.”

“No, no. I just mean that this is...still relatively new for your two, you’ve been together all of three and a half months? You’ve been in the honeymoon period. Now you’re going to see each other’s rough edges. The heart of relationships aren’t about the good times, they’re about the bad times and how you come back from them.”

Fareeha waved her hand for two more beers. “And...I know Gabe. I have since I was younger than your students. He is slow to get close to anyone, slower to trust, and very guarded with anything personal. The fact that you have become such a part of his life in such a short time is nothing I have ever seen before from him.”

Jesse was back to picking at the label, feeling uncomfortable about anyone talking so personally about Gabe. His Gabe.

Fareeha laid a hand on his arm. “The fact you are fighting at all? Psh. If Gabe was truly upset, truly done with your relationship you would be dropped and iced out. When he is done with a person he is polite to a fault but it is like they and their past do not exist. If he’s arguing then he cares.”

Jesse forced a swallow of beer down past the lump in his throat. “I think...we’re gonna have to talk. A lot. I said some angry things, but he’s...he seems to think some things that aren’t true, and I don’t know how to prove a negative.”

Fareeha shrugged. “Talking. And not on the phone where you can’t see each other’s faces and certainly not through text message. It’s the only thing that has helped Angela and me, and neither of us are as,” she paused delicately, “stubborn as Gabe and you.”

“That your way of saying we’re grumpy old assholes?”

“Old, not so much in your case. But yes to the rest.” She smirked as Jesse pushed at her shoulder and cracked a smile for the first time in days.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Jesse, can you hear me?” He looked up, trying to pull the face above him into focus. It was Mei, he thought, unless it might have been her and a twin sister sitting very close to one another.

“We’re going to send you back a day early, okay? You need to get home.”

Jesse had made it through most of their last week before he ate a fruit salad that he didn’t realize had papaya in it. No one could locate his epipen and Jesse was beyond being able to tell them at that point, so Lúcio drove to the MSF outpost and back, bringing Dr Perkins with him. Jesse seemed to be okay, but between the anaphylaxis, his arm, and the minor infection in his leg he’d been fighting off, he had spent the past two days in bed, sleeping and sweating. Jesse thought Puerto Rico was a wonderful country, but he was ready to see the back of it for awhile.

Mei and Lúcio shoved his things in his bags, heedless of what went where in favor of making it all fit. Jesse wanted to help but he sat there like a lump on a log, eating arroz con leche and feeling like hell. Before he knew it Jesse was at the airport, sitting at the gate with Dr Perkins who had already planned to fly out early so she could head home for her sister’s wedding.

“Hey, do you have a ride back home, from the airport? I know we’re getting in earlier than you thought so you should check in on that.”

Jesse said that of course he did, then realized that he didn’t know. Originally Reyes was going to pick him up when he came in tomorrow, but now…

Their only exchange since the fight had been after Jesse’s talk with Fareeha, alcohol and exhaustion giving him the courage to text and ask if they could talk when he got back. Reyes had said yes, and the conversation ended there. Jesse had used his confidence at that as fuel to apologize to Lúcio and Mei, who were more understanding than Jesse thought he deserved.

He bounced his phone in his hand for a minute before texting Genji, asking if he could pick Jesse up that evening. Genji said yes, blessedly not asking any questions. Jesse knew they were coming, though.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Genji’s sleek black hybrid pulled up to the curb, and Jesse pulled himself to his feet, trying to get both bags over his shoulder with one hand. Genji rushed over and pulled the larger bag away.

“What in god’s name happened to you? You look like hell.” Below the rough words, Jesse could hear the worry in Genji’s voice.

They got the bags in the car and Jesse into the passenger seat, and Genji pulled into traffic. “Well?”

“Long story short, I tripped and fell, and then I had an allergic reaction. ‘S why they sent me home a day early.”

There was a long pause, Genji waiting for him to continue. 

“...and Gabe and I had a big fight over the phone, a week and some ago, and we haven’t dealt with it yet.”

“Hence why I’m the one picking you up right now.”

“Yeah.” Jesse picked at a loose thread at the top of his cast. 

“Well, you’ll have time to make up, with the days off.” Genji said, taking an exit off the highway.

“What?”

“Oh, you might not be familiar, given you were in New Mexico. In places with proper seasons, they give us so many snow days we can use a year. For our district, if you don’t use up those days, they stick them in somewhere late spring semester. We didn’t use any, so we have Monday and Tuesday off. And Wednesday is parent-teacher conference day, so we’re not due back to school until noon. Today’s Friday so you have four whole days of freedom ahead of you.”

That was great. Jesse could have a chance to get his apartment in order, to get the info from the substitute and see how his kids were doing…

To talk to Gabe…

Jesse watched the streetlights go by, trying to empty his mind of the sudden anxiety.


	14. Chapter 14

Gabriel Reyes (10:15 am): When does your flight get in? 

Jesse McCree (11:10 am): sorry i missed your text, was sleeping. i actually got in last night, they sent me home early

Gabriel Reyes (11:12 am): Oh ok

\-----

Sombra (11:45 am): tell me why Gabi is drinking tequila in my cafe before noon on a Saturday

Jesse McCree (11:46 am): because we’re both idiots

Sombra (11:46 am): I’m not hearing anything I don’t already know cabrón

Jesse McCree (11:47 am): we had a fight when i was in puerto rico. and haven’t talked about it yet. and i got in early last night and forgot to tell him

Sombra (11:48 am): jesús cristo you two deserve each other

Sombra (11:50 am): come to the cafe at 7 tomorrow night. talk to me. gabi won’t be there.

Sombra (11:52 am): jesse

Sombra (11:53 am): JESSE

Jesse McCree (11:54 am): fine fine see you then

\-----

Jesse spent the day doing not much of anything, leaving the house only to go to the grocery store and restock his empty fridge. That night he tossed and turned, not hot and sweaty for the first time in a month but now unused to his large, cold bed.

Sunday dawned surprisingly chill, the spring weather taking a turn for the cold. Jesse checked on his mostly-healed leg, and deemed it acceptable to try a run. He went slower than his usual - he had done so much physical work on the trip that he hadn’t run at all, and though he had been constantly exercising his legs were out of practice. He only went a mile or so before his leg started to throb and he slowly jogged back. 

He decided that he would turn his apartment into something approaching livable before meeting Sombra. He dusted around his books and knickknacks, and decided to deadhead his flowering plants right onto the floor so he could sweep up the dust and leaves all together. Something in his chest twinged to see that all his plants had been properly watered. He touched the soil of his sagebrush, which Reyes enjoyed calling an oversized weed that was taking advantage of his nostalgia, and found it damp. Reyes had come back and kept up with the schedule, even though they were fighting.

Jesse swept the floor on automatic, his brain a soup of emotions. He was distracted enough that his apartment was getting sparkling clean, for better or worse. After cleaning the bathroom he showered, having gotten quite grimy during his endeavors. He put on jeans and a buttonup, and was staring at the hoodie he had borrowed from Reyes _ ...god, was it really all the way back in September? How did they really not get together until New Year’s? _ when the doorbell rang.

Jesse frowned and looked at his phone. 6:30. Too late for a delivery of any kind. He clattered down the stairs and pulled open the door to find himself staring at Reyes. He looked...not great, actually. His brows were drawn in and his jaw was set in a way that made the lines on his face deepen and his scars stand out. He was wearing his usual sweats, but he had both the beanie on and the hood up, which was always a sign that he wasn’t feeling comfortable. Even though Jesse knew it made perfect sense for him to feel that way, it still hurt to know Gabe might feel like that because of  _ him _ . 

“You have a key,” was what came out of Jesse’s mouth without him actively thinking about it.

“I didn’t want to presume,” came the quiet response.

Jesse turned and went to the door at the foot of the stairs, looking back when he didn’t hear Reyes. He was still standing outside the doorway, looking at Jesse with an unreadable expression. 

“Come on,” said Jesse, turning and going up the stairs. Something in him relaxed to hear the door shut behind Reyes’s footsteps. Once upstairs Jesse led them into the kitchen, waving a hand at a chair at the table. 

“Beer?”

“Coffee, if you have it.” 

_ Yeah, we probably should stay sober _ , Jesse thought, as his hands automatically went through the process of measuring grounds and pouring water. He pulled down Reyes’s favorite mug, a big clunky stoneware thing made by an art major friend of Jesse’s in college that he had somehow kept around for most of twenty years. 

As the coffee bubbled, Jesse’s phone dinged with the reminder he had set himself to go to Sombra’s, having programmed it thinking he might take a nap. “Let me just…” Jesse typed a quick text to Sombra, looking up to see Reyes’s mouth thin and his head turn away.

“It’s just Sombra. Was going to see her tonight.”

“I can always go, you could…”

“No, I’d rather be here with you.” Jesse turned and busied himself with pouring coffee so he didn’t have to look at Reyes’s face. “I’d always rather be with you.”

He sat across from Reyes, putting a mug in front of each of them. Reyes wrapped his hands around it, seeming to crave the warmth more than the coffee itself. Jesse stirred some sugar in, taking more time than he needed before taking a sip.

“Why...how did this happen, Gabe? I don’t understand why we’re fighting, and I’ve been a mess because of it. You know - I need to know that you know - that I love you, and would never mess around on you. And it, it hurts to think -”

“I’m an asshole,” Reyes interrupted him. “Not just now, but generally. You don’t see it much because you...you bring out the best in me, but. I don’t open up to people much and I’m suspicious of everything and I’m arrogant and a whole bunch of other things I’m not proud of. Some things I try to fix, some I don’t because I don’t actually care what most people think of me.”

He turned the mug in his hands, finally taking a sip. “I could give you fifty years of excuses, that this happened in my childhood or that happened in the service, but a lot of it boils down to that I just don’t tend to expect good things to last, because in my experience they don’t. It’s not...it’s not that I think that you, Jesse, would cheat on me, it’s that everything has been so easy and I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I assumed this was it, and I had been blind because I loved you and so obviously there was something wrong the whole time…”

Jesse waited a moment to see if he would continue, before reaching out a hand to pull of of Reyes’s away from the mug, finally touching for the first time in a month. “You gotta talk to me, darlin’. I could have told you that there was nothing to worry about, but I can’t read your mind.” 

Reyes ran his thumb over the fingers of Jesse’s hand, before pushing his hood back and pulling his beanie off with the other hand, scrubbing a hand through his hair tiredly. “I’m sure it’s a shock to you that I’ve never been the most successful at long term relationships. But. Us. We’re good, together. I want us to work.”

Jesse brought his other hand up, clasping Reyes’s between hand and cast. “We will.”

Reyes let go of his mug to turn Jesse’s cast around between his hands. “Want to give me the full story?”

“Yeah, let’s get more comfy.” They went over to the couch, easily falling into their usual positions of Reyes wedged in the corner with legs stretched out on the chaise and Jesse tucked in under his arm. 

“So I was walking back from the construction site to the outpost…” Jesse told him the story, which then segued into various tales from his time away. Reyes updated him on the students - so-and-so was suspended, this couple broke up and one of their mothers was trying to get admin to switch their classes, the lacrosse team was doing well and on their way to finish the season with medals. 

Reyes ran his hand over Jesse’s good arm. “You’re thinner.” 

“Yeah, between the reaction and the pain pills, food just wasn’t a goal for me at the end there. What annoys me more is that I’ve lost all my conditioning. Tried to run yesterday and did worse than the students.”

“You’re healing. Take your time. We’ll get you fed up and back on your feet soon.”

Reyes’s hands on Jesse’s arm were starting to feel good, and Jesse tilted his head back, not asking for anything but leaving the option open. Reyes bent his head down and gently fit his mouth over Jesse’s, not doing much more than feeling out the lips below him. They kissed gently, slowly, getting to know each other again after so many weeks apart. Jesse’s neck was starting to hurt so he pulled away in order to sling a leg over and straddle Reyes. This position was better, Jesse able to angle downwards and press Reyes into the couch. He ran a hand through Reyes’s hair, cradling the back of his head. 

As Jesse started to kiss down, Reyes’s neck, a hand gently pushed his head back. “Jesse… Jesse, stop for a moment.” Jesse reluctantly pulled back, licking stubble-swollen lips and running a thumb over the slight flush coloring the face below him.

“I...wasn’t expecting this, I guess. I worked out earlier and was cleaning and my place is a sty and- can we just move this to the shower?” Jesse smiled at Reyes’s awkwardness, dropping a final kiss on his mouth before getting up. 

In the bathroom Jesse stripped Reyes out of his shirts before unbuttoning his own. He caught Reyes’s mouth in a kiss before whispering against his lips, “And now, you get to do something  _ really _ sexy.”

At Reyes’s raised eyebrow, Jesse whipped out a plastic bag and medical tape, waving his cast in the air. “Tape me up?” Reyes smirked as he carefully wrapped the bag around and secured it to Jesse’s arm.

“How long are you stuck in this?”

“They said about six weeks, so I’ve got about a month to go.” Tape secured, Jesse reached into the shower to turn it on, letting it warm up as Reyes rid them of the rest of their clothing. Jesse had only turned on the shower lights and not the overheads, so they existed in a small pool of soft light and falling water as the edges of the bathroom were obscured by steam. 

“Could I ask a favor?” Jesse asked, as he ran a bar of soap across his chest.

“Sure.”

“Could you wash my hair? I haven’t been able to do it properly, one hand just isn’t good enough for it.” In response Reyes turned Jesse around, and tilted his head into the stream. He grabbed a comb from where it hung on the removable shower head’s hose and gently started to detangle his hair. 

“You need a haircut.”

“I know. It was so hot on the trip with all the humidity, I almost cut it all off a couple of times.”

“Now that’s extreme, you definitely don’t want to get rid of it all.” Reyes gathered the wet hair in a fist and pulled backwards, whispering into Jesse’s ear, “How could I do this, then?”

Jesse could feel Reyes’s arousal pushed against his ass and his own was obvious in front of him. They weren’t teenagers, though, and two well-built men in a small shower with one of them injured already was just asking for disaster so they collectively decided to ignore it. Mostly.

Jesse sighed in pleasure as Reyes’s fingers worked shampoo through his hair, leaning back against the warm, wet body behind him. He felt the chuckle as much as heard it through his back, “Don’t fall asleep on me now, kid.”

“ ‘m not, you just have magic fingers.”

They got washed and rinsed, and stepped out of the shower. Reyes dried himself off as Jesse unwrapped his arm, then took a towel and started drying Jesse off with a murmured, “Let me.”

Jesse was standing with his hands on the bathroom counter as Reyes was drying off his legs, when he heard the towel tossed into a corner, and large hands pulling his cheeks apart. The flicker of a wet tongue against his anus made him brace his hands on the counter for real, as he hissed out an obscenity. He could  _ feel _ Reyes smiling against his backside. 

“Want me to stop?”

“Hell no.”

Reyes played with the ring of muscle at the entrance, tugging at it with tongue and lips until he could push in, only an inch of penetration that felt like an earthquake. Jesse felt himself loosening, wanting more, wanting Reyes as close to him as possible. The steam was clearing from the room and Jesse looked at himself in the mirror, barely recognizing the lust-flushed, dark-eyed person looking back at him. 

Something larger, a thumb Jesse thought, pushed in slightly at his entrance then stopped. “Is this...can we?” Reyes asked. Jesse pulled open the drawer by his left hip and fumbled out a bottle of lube without looking, reaching back to hand it to Reyes.

He heard the click of the cap, the sound of thick liquid, and a cool slick finger started to press in. Jesse spread his legs more, and startled at the feel of a beard brushing over his back; Reyes must have stood up. Reyes kissed along his shoulder blades as the finger worked in and out and in and out and became two, stretching and tugging. It had easily been a decade since Jesse last bottomed, but he would try anything for Gabe and as fingers brushed against a spot that made him throw his head back, he realized he didn’t want to ever be with anyone else.

Jesse had barely noticed when a third finger was added, but he definitely noticed when they all withdrew. Turning to see Reyes dripping lube onto his cock, he reached over to jack him slowly and spread the lube around. Reyes kissed him deeply before knocking his hand away and pushing him down until his chest met the counter. Jesse bore down on the pressure at his entrance and Reyes slipped in easily, before starting to work his way deeper. One hand was at his hip, pulling him back, while the other rubbed soothing circles into his back. Reyes started in on a smooth rhythm of deep thrusts that pushed Jesse’s cock against the counter’s drawers and made him hiss at the stimulation.

It wasn’t quite enough, though, so Jesse pushed himself up, leaning back against Reyes and changing the angle. Reyes pushed his legs slightly farther apart with a foot, and shifted to thrusting more upwards. Jesse’s head lolled back against Reyes’s shoulder, as an arm wrapped around his upper chest. Reyes’s other hand was still on his hip, but it crept forward until it wrapped around the base of Jesse’s cock, prompting a gasp and the world fuzzing out a bit. It held tight, keeping Jesse from coming the way his body wanted to. As the feeling dulled down into more baseline arousal, Jesse turned his head to nip at Reyes’s jaw. “I’m okay, I’m back,” Reyes loosened his grip at the words. 

After awhile Reyes’s hips started to speed up, and Jesse could feel they were getting close to the end. He kissed the cheek next to him, before Reyes bent his head to kiss down his throat, settling on that spot just above the collarbone and to the side of the tendons that often ended up with marks. Jesse looked at the mirror in front of them with hazy eyes. Reyes had an arm across his chest, mouth on his neck, hand lazily stroking his cock, unseen dick in his ass…he was surrounded by the other man, inside and out, and after weeks apart and weeks of fighting there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.

Hand and hips sped up, and Jesse got to see through heavy-lidded eyes just what it looked like when he fell apart. His injured arm clenched at the edge of the sink, while his other hand dug fingers into the thigh behind him. He felt his balls draw up and had just enough time to whisper, “Gabe,” before his eyes snapped closed, his back arched, and he came so hard he felt a muscle twinge in his side. He thrust into the circle of Reyes’s hand, the length of the orgasm reminding him of how long it had been since he’d come last. The hand on his cock got suddenly tighter as a jerk of hips and tooth marks on his shoulder let him know Reyes had come as well. 

They breathed together unevenly, heaving chests slowing as they came down from the afterglow. Jesse watched Reyes absently lick kisses into his shoulder and side of his throat, until he pressed a kiss into Jesse’s cheek and met his eyes in the mirror.

“Hey there, darlin’.”

“Hey,” another kiss, pressed into the beard at the corner of Jesse’s jaw. “We look good together.”

“That we do.” After a final nip to his shoulder, Reyes pulled out. Jesse made a face at the feeling. “Not my favorite part.”

Reyes wiped him down gently with a damp washcloth. “You’ll live.” Reaching forward to try and clean Jesse’s come off of the counter, he muttered, “Jesus,  _ mijo _ , you hide a super soaker in your dick?”

Flushing, Jesse snatched the cloth away to do it himself. “There was pretty much no privacy anywhere, so...it had been awhile.” 

Reyes grabbed it back and tossed it in the corner with the other towels. “Worry about it later. Come to bed.” Jesse was glad he’d done laundry, the crisp sheets wrapped around them as they curled up in his bed and Reyes turned on the TV. 

“I don’t even know what’s going on in the world anymore, we didn’t have television and reception was too spotty to get much on our phones.” 

“World’s still standing, for better or worse. Now relax. Take a nap. We’ll order something in later.”

“You know we...we need to talk more. One conversation and sex doesn’t solve everything.”

“Even when it’s really good sex?”

Jesse pushed fingers into a recent hickey, prompting a yelp. “Even then.” He settled back into Reyes’s arms - the conversation could wait until later. Now, he was at home, finally, ache in his hips and calm in his brain for the first time in weeks.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reyes’s eyes widened cartoonishly as he saw someone coming up from behind Jesse and quickly shoved a large bite of pancake in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to talk.

“Are you serious?”

Jesse winced as Sombra stomped her way around the diner table so she could glare at them both equally. 

“I listen to this one,” she gestured at Reyes, chewing his pancakes very slowly, “bitch and moan drunkenly for hours and try and get you” - a purple glitter tipped finger stabbed at Jesse - “to come and talk but noooo you bail on me and now you’re all happy back together and you don’t even come to my cafe, you come to this excuse for a food establishment!” She lapsed into a string of profanities in Spanish that Jesse desperately hoped no one else in the diner could understand.

“Sombra... _ mija _ …”

“Don’t you  _ mija _ me, Jesse McCree.” She seemed to run out of steam, folding her arms. “Are you two okay, now?” 

Jesse nodded. “Yeah. And thanks for listening to Gabe, I guess.”

She snorted. “Ah yes, the big strong man who is now eating so he doesn’t have to talk to me.” Reyes looked up sheepishly, a drip of syrup caught in his goatee, and shrugged. She threw up her hands and went to the takeout counter, grabbing a bag of food before coming back. “You two stop by soon. I want to see some goddamn smiles.” She kissed the top of each of their heads and flounced her way out of the diner.

“I think we do owe her a bottle of something this time. Or you do, at least. Drunkenly bitching and moaning?”

Reyes found himself very fascinated by his home fries. “It wasn’t my proudest moment.”

Jesse sat back in his seat, full of good food, and decided to let it go. “So. Three weeks left in the school year. We’re almost done.” 

“That we are. Which actually reminds me of something.” Reyes set his fork aside and wiped his hands on his napkin before clasping Jesse’s uninjured hand in both of his, a serious look on his face. “Jesse McCree, would you do the honor of accompanying me to prom?”

Smile twitching at his lips, Jesse pulled his hand back. “What kind of promposal was that? Where are my flowers, my posters, my horse with something shaved into its ass?”

“Please tell me you didn’t witness that last one.”

“Oh, but I did. ‘Prom’ on one side, a question mark on the other, and a broken jaw for the kid’s friend who tried to hold the horse wrong.”

“Well, this is just me asking if you want to go together. All the teachers go, pretty much - there are enough of us that no one individually has to spend a lot of time chaperoning.”

“Then yes, of course.” Jesse frowned for a second. “Is this like...full on tux territory?”

Reyes smirked, “Oh, yes. It’s held at this historic hotel downtown, and the kids go a little bit nuts with their outfits. Teachers can be more relaxed if they want, but for the most part we match the kids.”

“I’ll get Genji to take me back to that one place, they can hook me up.”

“Just don’t take his advice on what to wear. You’ll end up in a color not seen in nature.”

“True. Now finish your home fries, I want to get home and get everything ready for the conferences tomorrow.”


	15. Chapter 15

The parent-teacher conferences went fine - the only students Jesse had to fail were the ones who never showed up, and their parents weren’t coming anyways. He enjoyed being able to tell the parents of the kids on the trip how well they did, and how they were going to have great capstone projects. Finishing up those projects would take up most of the seniors’ time for the rest of the year. He did have to put a little fear of god (or in this case, the College Board) into his AP students about the AP test coming the following Monday, but he was confident in all of their abilities to do well.

During a break he wandered over to Genji. “Heeey partner, want to do me a favor?”

Genji looked up skeptically. “I am suspicious of where this is going.”

“I agreed to go to prom, and wondered if you could get me suited up again.”

“Absolutely, on one condition?”

“No green, Genji.”

“No, no. Just please get your hair cut at that salon again, you’re starting to look like an overgrown spider plant.”

Jesse clenched his hand so as not to automatically run his hand through his hair. It had been difficult enough to wrangle this morning that he had just given up and pulled it back into a tail. “Yeah, I was actually just talking to Gabe about how it was too long.”

Genji glanced around delicately for a moment before drawing closer. “Are you two...okay?”

“Oh, yeah. We made up, he asked me to prom, it’s all good.”

“Okay, then. Friday after school?”

“Sounds good.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Haircut first, then tuxedo. I don’t want you walking in there looking like a hobo.”

“Fine, fine.” The haircut went quickly, Jesse losing a good few inches - close to the nape at the back but longer in the front again. As they walked to the suit store, Jesse brushed at his neck, bits of hair still clinging to it.

“Stop twitching.”

“I’ve got hair bits everywhere, I can’t help it.”

“I’m sorry that you get your hair cut so rarely that it’s an unfamiliar feeling, but deal with it, please.”

They met with the same manager as last time, who remembered Jesse and was pleased that the suit worked out. He was even more pleased to be be outfitting Jesse with a tux, but first -

“What will your date be wearing?”

Jesse felt a blank look come over his face. “...Clothing? I’m sorry, I’m assuming a tux but I honestly don’t know.”

“Call him and ask him,” Genji suggested.

While Genji talked to the manager - something about cummerbunds versus waistcoats - Jesse called Reyes. “Hey, are you at home?”

“Yeah, why?”

“The guy I’m getting my tux from wants to know what you’re wearin’.”

“It’s...black.”

“Color me goddamn surprised, Gabriel Reyes. He was talking about shirts and...I don’t even know. Could you just text me a picture?”

“Sure. My payment is a picture of you in your getup, though.”

“Come on now, Gabe. Can’t see the bride before her wedding day.”

“Yeah yeah. Come over when you’re done?”

“Sure.”

A second later, a picture of a tuxedo that looked like every other tuxedo Jesse had seen came through, and he handed his phone to the manager.

Happily they had Jesse’s size in everything in stock, though there was a moment of consternation when they couldn’t figure out if his cast would fit through the jacket’s sleeve. They compromised by unbuttoning the sleeve to get it on, and then fastening it with button extenders.

“It’s not comin’ off ‘til after graduation, so I’m stuck with it for prom too.” Jesse thanked his past drugged-up self for picking black for the cast; at least it blended in.

Jesse then had to wait around while Genji did some custom order involving a tuxedo jacket. Walking back to the car, Jesse said, “I heard the word ‘peacock’ in there. Please tell me there won’t be feathers involved.”

Genji shrugged, a smile at the side of his mouth. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, Jesse.”

However uncomfortable Jesse might be with formalwear, he could be sure that with Genji around the attention wouldn’t be on him.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse leaned against his truck outside of Reyes’s townhouse, waiting. The door opened and Reyes stood backlit in the light from the entryway for a moment, until he flicked the switch and locked the door. Jesse watched him as he came down the stairs. Black tuxedo, black tie, black waistcoat, shined black shoes, crisp snow-white shirt. He could have been modelling it in a catalogue, were it not for the scars and crooked smile on his face.

“Look at you, kid.”

Jesse was dressed much the same, though his waistcoat was a dark grey and his tie had silver threads running through it. Reyes lifted his arm to look at the tiny cufflinks, shaped like…

“Is that Peacekeeper?”

Jesse shrugged with a grin. “Close enough. Present from the family years back.”

“So you had fancy cufflinks, but no actual tux.”

“Eh, got there in the end.”

“You did.” Reyes spent a long minute making sure Jesse knew exactly how he felt via lips and tongue, before pulling back, slapping Jesse’s ass, and going over to the passenger side. “Let’s go!”

“Ugh,” Jesse said as he got in. “You can’t just start something like that and not finish it, Gabe.”

“We’ve got a good half hour drive to the hotel, you’ll be fine.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

The hotel was beautiful, an art deco monstrosity over a hundred years old. As they got out of the truck, Jesse looked up at the arches against the sky, and suddenly got why Reyes took pictures. While he was looking up and thinking, Reyes came over and linked Jesse’s arm with his. “Ready.”

Jesse looked at their arms and back up at Reyes’s face, eyebrows raised. “You okay with this?”

“When I asked you to prom, I meant it, _puta_. Now come in with me so we can scandalize some kids.” Jesse grinned and walked arm-in-arm into the hotel.

“Jesse, Gabe!” A familiar voice called from the side of the room.

“Fareeha!” Jesse exclaimed. She had an arm around Angela, both wearing beautiful floor-length gowns. She came over and gave him a long hug.

Pulling back for a moment, she looked him over with a professional’s eye. “You look better, put some weight back on. Your hair doesn’t look like a middle-school macrame project any more.” She flicked a quick eye over to Reyes, who was talking with Angela, and back to Jesse. “Everything seems...better?”

“Yeah, it’s all going well. Thanks in part to you gettin’ my head on straight. Thank you again.” He gave her another quick hug before Reyes grabbed her up and swung her around.

“Look at my little ReeRee, all grown up and wearing gowns.” Reyes said, looking like he wanted nothing more than to give her a noogie.

“You touch one hair on my head, Gabriel Reyes, and you will pay for it.”

“What, going to take me out with all your special training? Because I’ve got that too.”

“Oh, no, I’ll just show my mother how you ruined my look.”

Gently setting her down and certainly not backing away to use Jesse as a body shield, Reyes cleared his throat. “Oh of course. Let’s, uh, keep you looking nice.”

Something sparkly caught Jesse’s eye, and he found his jaw dropping as he muttered, “My god, he did mean the feathers.”

Genji strode up to their group, resplendent in his custom tuxedo. It did not, in fact, have real peacock feathers, but ones made from glass and metal beads embroidered to the jacket. Several went down the right arm of the jacket, while far more went up the left breast, finishing in freestanding ‘feathers’ that waved around his shoulder. There was a delicate black-on-black print on the lapel, and his bowtie was a gold that matched the beads.

There was silence for a moment as he spun around to let everyone get the full effect. “Well, there’ll be no confusing you for one of the students,” Reyes said finally.

Angela immediately began looking closely, asking Genji about construction. Jesse shook his head and pulled Reyes away.

“I don’t suppose they have a bar, here,” he murmured so the students wouldn’t hear.

“No, they tried way back in the day but some kids with good fake IDs took advantage of it and ruined it forevermore for all of us.” Gabe poured them glasses of punch then gave them both to Jesse, pulling him into a somewhat darker corner.

He pulled something out of his back pocket and waved it at Jesse before uncapping it. “Please tell me that is not Felix’s brother’s flask that I confiscated.”

“Don’t worry, I replaced the shitty tequila with bourbon.”

“Oh, well _that’s_ okay then.”

Slipping the flask back in his pocket and taking his glass back from Jesse, they walked to the edge of the floor and watched the swirling, sparkling dancers move across the floor.

“How’re you boys doing?” Jesse nearly choked on his drink as Morrison appeared out of nowhere next to them.

“We’re fine, Jack. Just enjoying the night,” Reyes said easily.

Morrison wore his tuxedo badly - he wore all suits badly, in fact, always looking like he’d be more comfortable in a uniform of some kind. His blond-fading-to-white hair was just as messy as always, with no concession to the event. Despite having a stick up his ass about just about everything, it was a consistent and fair stick - the students all respected him even if they didn’t always like him.

To Jesse’s shock, Morrison reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out several small bottles. “Want a nip? Gotta have something to get through the night.”

“Nah, we’re already good,” Reyes offered his cup to Morrison, who took a sip.

“Nicer than what I’ve got.”

“Should’ve planned better, then.”

Jesse had been trying to fade into the background, but found himself the target of Morrison’s laser-beam blue eyes. “How’s the end of your year been, Jesse? Heard you had an eventful end to your overseas trip.”

“Heh, yeah,” Jesse waved his cast in the air. “It was fine though. Main thing was that the kids had a good experience, and we did a lot of good work there.”

“Good, good. Broken bones heal, Jesse, pain is temporary, scars look good.” Eyes flickered to Reyes’s face and back to Jesse’s. “As you’ve discovered, apparently.”

A strong hand clapped Jesse on the back, nearly spilling his drink. “See you around, gentlemen. I’m going to try and scare the shit out of some students.” Morrison walked off, looking ready to attack any moment.

“Well, that was…” Jesse trailed off. The number of one-on-one conversations he’d had with Morrison could be counted on one hand. Amari was his evaluator, so he dealt with her mostly when it came to internal affairs stuff.

“That was Jack. He’s actually a good guy, but not many people get to know him because of the whole principal thing. Annoying and pedantic as shit sometimes, but good people.”

Jesse’s head tilted as he remembered that Gabe and Morrison had dated, albeit decades ago. That would have been…something.

“It was twenty years ago, Jesse. Stop thinking about it.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking about.”

“Yes I do, and I recognize that look on your face. We were hot together, but we were just too different of people. Still able to work well together for this long after, which probably says we weren’t meant to be.”

Reyes drained his punch and set his and Jesse’s empty cups on a nearby table. “Come dance with me.”

It was like that dance all those months ago back in October, though this time they were surrounded by glitter and fancily dressed teens, instead of basketballs and tennis ball hoppers. Jesse carefully wrapped his injured arm around Reyes’s shoulder as Reyes wrapped an arm around his waist, their hands threading together in long familiarity.

“Why is it that every time we dance I have an injured arm?” Jesse asked.

Reyes frowned in confusion before remembering Jesse’s cut arm that he had bandaged up. “Hey, I cleaned you up pretty well. Barely even scarred.”

“I can see the scar, but I take your point.” They were quiet for a moment before Jesse pulled Reyes a little closer and murmured in his ear. “That’s when I think I fell for you, you know.”

“I thought you fell for me that first day when you crashed into all those chairs...Hey!” Reyes laughed as Jesse thunked his cast against his shoulder.

Laugh dying down, Reyes pulled back a bit to look Jesse in the face. “Why then, out of curiosity?”

“I don’t know. Might’ve been just fallin’ for the pretty nurse that cleaned me up,” Jesse smiled at Reyes’s look of indignation. “But I think it was more this grumpy guy who you wouldn’t think had a romantic bone in his body askin’ me to dance in this smelly little room, and it bein’ the best part of the night.”

Reyes mouth quirked up at the corner. “I wish I had a more monumental moment, but I don’t. Thought you were attractive for awhile, the dance was definitely part of it, kept up the flirting...and then we were sitting there and you were putting the Halloween makeup on me, and something just clicked in my head.” He shrugged. “And here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“So this summer.”

“Yeah?”

“Move in with me.”

Jesse stopped dancing in surprise, until Reyes nudged him back onto the beat. “What?”

Reyes shrugged, looking awkward for the first time in his tux. “I’m sure your lease will be up in July. You know that I have more room than I need, and it’s not like we aren’t together five of seven nights of the week anyways.”

Jesse thought. He wasn’t particularly attached to his apartment, and Reyes’s place...felt like home. Like he could fit in there. It was a better neighborhood than he was in now, and the commute would be shorter. Hell, they could carpool together half the time.

“You know I want nothing more than to say yes, but…”

Reyes sighed, “But we’re still coming off of...this thing recently.”

“I’m not saying no, Gabe. I’m saying that there’s another two months on my lease, so let’s talk a lot about it and plan and come at this like adults and not dumbasses.”

“Sombra would be proud of that statement.”

“Fareeha, too.”

“Oh god, did you talk to her? I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No, I don’t think she’ll ever mention it. She loves you like a big brother, Gabe, and it was clear that she cares a lot. I was lucky to have her there with me. An’ lucky to have you.”

They smiled some more at each other, and danced, and let the year come to an end.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When the yearbooks came out, Jesse immediately bought one. Reyes refused at first, until Jesse pointed out it was the first memento of their first year together and Reyes’s inner sap gave way. It was fun to look through the pictures of the kids from throughout the year - you could literally see them grow up before your eyes, comparing later shots to earlier ones.

There was a great picture of Reyes in his _Día de los Muertos_ makeup looming over an unconcerned Ana, pictures of all their teams winning, an unfortunate picture of a blushing Jesse being sung to by the entire Spanish class on Valentine’s Day. Pictures of dances, experiments, projects, trips, and everything in between.

At the back, of course, were the class superlatives. Dominic got class clown, Roger and Jillian were most athletic, Rosa got most likely to succeed. And at the end, with the label of best couple, was a picture of Reyes and Jesse smiling at each other on the dance floor at prom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you made it all the way here - and even if you didn't - thanks for reading! <3


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